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Picture this:

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It's Monday morning,

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you're at the office,

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you're settling in for the day at work,

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and this guy that you sort of [br]recognize from down the hall,

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walks right into your cubicle

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and he steals your chair.

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Doesn't say a word —

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just rolls away with it.

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Doesn't give you any information[br]about why he took your chair

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out of all the other chairs [br]that are out there.

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Doesn't acknowledge the fact [br]that you might need your chair

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to get some work done today.

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You wouldn't stand for [br]it. You'd make a stink.

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You'd follow that guy[br]back to his cubicle

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and you'd say, "Why my chair?"

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Okay, so now it's Tuesday morning[br]and you're at the office,

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and a meeting invitation pops [br]up in your calendar.

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(Laughter)

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And it's from this woman who you [br]kind of know from down the hall,

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and the subject line references some [br]project that you heard a little bit about.

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But there's no agenda.

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There's no information about why[br]you were invited to the meeting.

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And yet you accept the [br]meeting invitation, and you go.

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And when this highly [br]unproductive session is over,

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you go back to your desk,

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and you stand at your [br]desk and you say,

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"Boy, I wish I had those two hours back,

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like I wish I had my chair back."

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(Laughter)

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Every day, we allow our coworkers,

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who are otherwise very, [br]very nice people,

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to steal from us.

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And I'm talking about something far [br]more valuable than office furniture.

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I'm talking about time. Your time.

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In fact, I believe that

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we are in the middle[br]of a global epidemic

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of a terrible new illness[br]known as MAS:

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Mindless Accept Syndrome.

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(Laughter)

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The primary symptom of [br]Mindless Accept Syndrome[br]

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is just accepting a meeting invitation[br]the minute it pops up in your calendar.

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(Laughter)

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It's an involuntary reflex — ding, [br]click, bing — it's in your calendar,

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"Gotta go, I'm already late [br]for a meeting." (Laughter)

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Meetings are important, right?

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And collaboration is key to [br]the success of any enterprise.

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And a well-run meeting can yield [br]really positive, actionable results.

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But between globalization

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and pervasive information technology,

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the way that we work

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has really changed dramatically [br]over the last few years.

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And we're miserable. (Laughter)

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And we're miserable not because the [br]other guy can't run a good meeting,

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it's because of MAS, our [br]Mindless Accept Syndrome,

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which is a self-inflicted wound.

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Actually, I have evidence to prove[br]that MAS is a global epidemic.

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Let me tell you why.

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A couple of years ago, I put a video [br]on Youtube, and in the video,

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I acted out every terrible [br]conference call you've ever been on.

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It goes on for about five minutes,

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and it has all the things that we [br]hate about really bad meetings.

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There's the moderator who has [br]no idea how to run the meeting.

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There are the participants who [br]have no idea why they're there.

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The whole thing kind of collapses[br]into this collaborative train wreck.

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And everybody leaves very angry.

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It's kind of funny.

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(Laughter)

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Let's take a quick look.

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(Video) Our goal today is to come to an [br]agreement on a very important proposal.

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As a group, we need to decide if —

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bloop bloop —

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Hi, who just joined?

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Hi, it's Joe. I'm working from home today.

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(Laughter)

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Hi, Joe. Thanks for [br]joining us today, great.

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I was just saying, we have a lot of people [br]on the call we'd like to get through,

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so let's skip the roll call [br]

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and I'm gonna dive right in.

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Our goal today is to come to an [br]agreement on a very important proposal.

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As a group, we need to decide if —

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bloop bloop —

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(Laughter)

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Hi, who just joined?

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No? I thought I heard a beep. (Laughter)

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Sound familiar?

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Yeah, it sounds familiar [br]to me, too.

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A couple of weeks after I put that online,

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500,000 people in dozens of countries,

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I mean dozens of countries,

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watched this video.

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And three years later, it's still getting [br]thousands of views every month.

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It's close to about a million right now.

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And in fact, some of the biggest[br]companies in the world,

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companies that you've [br]heard of but I won't name,

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have asked for my permission to use [br]this video in their new-hire training

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to teach their new employees how [br]not to run a meeting at their company.

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And if the numbers —

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there are a million views and it's[br]being used by all these companies —

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aren't enough proof that we have [br]a global problem with meetings,

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there are the many, many thousands

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of comments posted online

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after the video went up.

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Thousands of people wrote things like,

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"OMG, that was my day today!"

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"That was my day every day!"

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"This is my life."

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One guy wrote,

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"It's funny because it's true.

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Eerily, sadly, depressingly true.

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It made me laugh until I cried.

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And cried. And I cried some more."

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(Laughter)

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This poor guy said,

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"My daily life until [br]retirement or death, sigh."

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These are real quotes

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and it's real sad.

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A common theme running through[br]all of these comments online

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is this fundamental belief [br]that we are powerless

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to do anything other [br]than go to meetings

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and suffer through these [br]poorly run meetings

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and live to meet another day.

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But the truth is, we're [br]not powerless at all.

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In fact, the cure for MAS[br]is right here in our hands.

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It's right at our fingertips, literally.

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It's something that I call ¡No MAS!

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(Laughter)

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Which, if I remember my [br]high school Spanish,

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means something like, [br]"Enough already, make it stop!"

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Here's how No MAS [br]works. It's very simple.

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First of all, the next time you [br]get a meeting invitation

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that doesn't have a lot [br]of information in it at all,

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click the tentative button!

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It's okay, you're allowed, [br]that's why it's there.

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It's right next to the accept button.

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Or the maybe button, or whatever button [br]is there for you not to accept immediately.

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Then, get in touch with the person[br]who asked you to the meeting.

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Tell them you're very excited [br]to support their work,

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ask them what the goal [br]of the meeting is,

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and tell them you're interested in learning [br]how you can help them achieve their goal.

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And if we do this often enough,

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and we do it respectfully,

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people might start to be [br]a little bit more thoughtful

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about the way they put together[br]meeting invitations.

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And you can make more thoughtful [br]decisions about accepting it.

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People might actually start [br]sending out agendas. Imagine!

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Or they might not have a conference call[br]with 12 people to talk about a status

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when they could just do a quick[br]email and get it done with.

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People just might start to change their [br]behavior because you changed yours.

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And they just might bring[br]your chair back, too. (Laughter)

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No MAS!

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Thank you.

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(Applause).