Russell Bishop is the managing partner of Bishop & Bishop, a consulting and coaching company helping executives and managers increase alignment and improve execution across the organization. The author of Workarounds That Work, he is a weekly columnist and senior editor at the Huffington Post. Read his review of Al Pittampalli's Read This Before Our Next Meeting:
Al Pittampalli addresses a time worn challenge that all of us have experienced for which many of us are chief executioner: Death by Meeting. However, rather than simply adding to the chorus of complaints about time-sucking, energy-sapping, life force-killing meetings, Al actually proposes something useful--The Modern Meeting and its seven critical principles of effective meeting management.
The single most powerful question to ask yourself or your co-workers when faced with a challenging situation is: What difference could you make that requires no one’s permission other than your own? Al embraces this critical notion of personal responsibility in his counter-intuitive approach to getting senior management to adopt the modern meeting: you don’t have to get everyone on board--you just need to start and let your success influence others to get on board.
If you find yourself withering away in endless meetings, if your organization suffers from consensus constipation, if you can’t seem to get a decision made this century, read this book now. Wait a minute--reading this book won’t help any more than reading a prescription will get you better. Instead, apply the Seven Principles and let your creative productivity soar! --Russell Bishop