Book Sips #26 — ‘Meeting Design’ by Kevin M. Hoffman
Another one that could have been an email we slack over and over again to our closest peers after a new issue of a looooong unproductive meeting. You could see that coming though: no clear agenda, a 50-slides monologue, and the large crowd staring at their laptops and smartphones.
But hey, the good news is it doesn’t have to be like that forever! The structure, pace, and engagement of the meetings as they are today is a decision we make but we can actually change all that by designing the meetings.
The idea of ‘designing’ a meeting might sound awkward at first: don’t we just sit and do the talk? Well, no. Setting the rules of the game, embracing everybody’s point of view and facilitation techniques are key ingredients to drive fruitful and engaging meetings.
In this book, ‘Meeting Design’ by Kevin M. Hoffman shows us the way to do so. It’s divided into two parts: the first one is all about setting the framework and mindset to create best-in-class meetings. A sip:
‘A meeting is a system that facilitates knowledge input and output while having the potential to create new perspectives at the same time. Poor meetings don’t move the ideas from one brain to another effectively, and therefore do a worse job at developing interesting or useful new ideas. Good ones move information more quickly and provide more space for unexpected new ideas. Good meetings happen more often when you accommodate attendees’ varying abilities to listen, to learn, and to express ideas in a way that’s “brain consumable”.’
In the second part, we find a set of ready-to-use meeting guides for different project moments and purposes. We found this very useful not to follow them blindly but more to use it as a sort of templates that we tweak according to the meeting needs and conditions we are facing at that moment.
Don’t displace meetings into emails: turn meetings into good ones instead!
#joshdixit
Meeting Design
by Kevin M. Hoffman
Why read?
Overall, in line with the book subtitle: ‘For Managers, Makers and Everyone’, we think this book is a must-read for anyone willing to improve the meeting culture in their organizations and personal facilitation skills. If you’ve run out of excuses to not attend worthless meetings but desist to accept meetings have to be a waste of time, this is your book!
232 pages, TWO WAVES BOOKS, 2018
Get this book here on Amazon!
