Synopsis
It is common to feel that corporate meetings are a waste of time. Time that could be better spent getting “real work” done. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This book is dedicated to the proposition that meetings can be meaningful, productive, and even fun—all at the same time.
Meetings matter only when they produce meaningful change – in ideas, in behaviors, in decisions, in commitments for future action – and in the knowledge-based economy those changes emerge from engaged individuals and become real in cohesive teams. Effective leaders today orchestrate conversations that produce consensus, commitment, and meaningful action.
This new book shows you both why collaboration and conversation are at the heart of the future, and how to build and lead a collaborative, conversation-based culture.
We need to bring business meetings into the digital age in the same way that we have reinvented business planning and written communication. The current form of corporate meetings is bent and broken; it just doesn’t fit the realities of the global, technology-rich world that we live in today.
This book is all about reinventing the business meeting. It offers advice and guidance for streamlining and strengthening all kinds of corporate conversations; but it focuses where it should, on the formal meetings that fill up over 50 percent of most managers’ calendars.
Endorsements
“Like most executives I spend most of my waking hours in meetings. With digital technology transforming the way we work, we desperately need to rethink how to make those meetings matter. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to lead more effective conversations.” – Joe Hagan, Chief Executive Officer, National Equity Fund
“This is much more than a book about meetings. Jim Ware has shared his views on how work is evolving and uses his insight to challenge many of our traditional meeting practices. This book should be read by anyone who is frustrated by wasting time in pointless meetings – which is probably most of us!” – Peter Thomson, COO of the FutureWork Forum and coauthor of Future Work