Death By Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (review)

Increasingly, leaders in the area of student affairs administration are being called upon to shape the "institutional priorities that affect student learning and development" (Dungy, 2003, p. 355). In order to do so, the ability to lead and manage the human resources within colleges and universities becomes ever more crucial and will require even greater skills (Dalton, 2003). It seems inevitable that these leaders will struggle with a problem that administrators and CEOs alike have continued to share: how to effectively design a staff meeting and facilitate it in a manner that produces thought, interest, and a shared sense of purpose. Designing and leading staff meetings are precisely the area that best-selling author Patrick Lencioni discusses in his latest work, Death by Meeting. The selection is aimed at business executives, but the parallel between corporate America and student affairs administration is striking. And while this is not a book that has all of the answers or even a prescription that will work for all staffs (nor is it billed as one), Lencioni's interpretation of the staff meeting and the inherent problems therein creates a thought provoking work that will cause leaders and managers to rethink their current methods.

Described as a "leadership fable," Death by Meeting shares the story of fictional Casey McDaniel, the owner of Yip Software, a company he has built from the ground up. Despite a steady profit line, a competent employee base, and national recognition, the organization wallows in mediocrity caused in large part by the ineffectiveness of the executive team's weekly staff meetings. No one dares challenge the conventional, fruitless meetings until the company becomes part of a larger corporation, Playsoft, and Casey's job is on the line. While the bulk of this work is a story, the author makes it clear through his descriptions of the people and the organization that this fictional executive team and its ineffective meetings could be any organization. Readers will note this connection and begin drawing examples from their own experiences.

It has been estimated that due to the nature of their work, nearly 59% of managers' time is spent in planned meetings, and another 10% in spontaneous meetings (Davis, 2003). Add in the element of shared governance that the college environment nurtures, and that estimate can be considered conservative (Birnbaum, 1988). Lencioni points out in his work that the people at Yip Software underestimated the significant impact that ineffective and dreadful meetings could create for an organization and how the organization's culture is actually derived from those meetings. Yip's weekly two hour meeting sufferered from the general malaise that occurs in many organizations: a two hour "mind numbing conversation, touching occasionally on interesting topics" (p. 37) with the real decision making being made elsewhere, in private meetings with the supervisor. It is unfortunate, as Lencioni points out, that beyond the obvious frustration and time wasted, a real opportunity is missed when meetings are ineffective.

What Lencioni proposes, as the fable unfolds, is that meeting facilitators can learn much from Hollywood. One can sit through a two hour long movie, even if some content is boring, because of conflict and drama. The problem with many staff meetings, like those at Yip, are that they are drama-less, devoid of conflict, and wrought with the "groupthink" mentality that prevents controversial decisions from being discussed and debated (Robbins, 2004). The bulk of Death by Meeting allows the reader to uncover this new way of thinking, and how one can use what television has known for years and apply it in the conference room with great success.

In the end and much to the surprise of the executive team at Yip Software, the problem is not that they have one long, boring, unproductive meeting, but rather that they are not having enough meetings. As Lencioni states, "the length of meetings had nothing to...