Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...about Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business

While the creativity and storytelling in most business novels is generally an insult to the word `novel,' Patrick Lencioni's work in Death by Meeting provides a very pleasant surprise. It is easy to read and you sense the emotions and issues that real people deal with every day. The heart of this book focuses on turning the dragging, lifeless and even painful experience of "the business meeting" into a dynamic essential element of the nervous system of any company.The first premise of Death by Meeting is the conflict is not to be avoided in meetings but encouraged. Different than personal conflict, idea and position conflict is what is needed to make tough decisions and take the company forward. The second major premise is that we can not have multipurpose meetings. We should have some meetings for information and others for decision making, each with a different style and cadence. Lencioni specifically suggests four types of meetings. The 5-minute Daily Check-in, the 45-90 minute Weekly Tactical, the 2-4 hour Monthly or Ad Hoc Strategy and the 1-2 day Quarterly Off-site Review.Few if any proposed meeting structures come closer to what you would expect to see in a truly lean company. A lean company has (a) tremendous focus on the task at hand, (b) a disdain for waste such as that demonstrated when meetings lack purpose and structure and (c) a respect for the benefit of structure and standardization, such as proposed by the rhythm these meetings have. I highly suggest taking a look at this book, and then a more serious look at your own meeting structure.

Purchased as a gift and was less expensive on Amazon than other places. I have not read it but the recipient was pleased.

The first part of the book written as a novel pulls you in and illustrates the points addressed in the later section. Very unique in the word of business books. Highly recommended.

Absolutely loved reading this. The fable was easy to follow and kept you engaged. The executive summary at the end is top-notch. I do wish that the PDF that was supposed to be downloadable on the website was easy to access. I was unable to find it. Loved the book.

I’m mad at myself for enjoying the format of this book. The first part of the book is a fictional narrative highlighting issues with executive meetings and the author’s framework for overcoming them. The narrative was hokey, but I was captivated and it did the job. I’ve already started implementing the meeting framework the author lays out and it has made things significantly more efficient and has helped us focus on the most important metrics of our mission. I highly recommend.