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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,
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that you sort of 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
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about why he took your chair
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out of all the other chairs
that are out there.
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Doesn't acknowledge the fact that you
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might need your chair
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to get some work done today.
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You wouldn't stand for it.
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You'd make a stink.
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You'd follow that guy
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
and you're at the office,
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and a meeting invitation pops
up in your calendar.
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(Laughter)
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And it's from this woman
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that you kind of know
from down the hall,
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and the subject line
references some project
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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
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you were invited to the meeting.
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And yet you accept the meeting invitation
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and you go.
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And when this highly
unproductive session is over,
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you go back to your desk,
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and you stand at your
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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Everyday,
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we allow our co-workers,
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who are otherwise very,
very nice people,
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to steal from us.
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And I'm talking about something
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far more valuable than office furniture.
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I'm talking about time.
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Your time.
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In fact, I believe that
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we are in the middle
of a global epidemic
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of a terrible new illness
known as MAS:
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Mindless Accept Syndrome.
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(Laughter)
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The primary symptom of Mindless Accept Syndrome
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is just accepting a meeting invitation
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the minute it pops up in your calendar.
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It's an involuntary reflex--
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ding, click, bing--
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it's in your calendar,
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"Gotta go, I'm already late for a meeting."
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(Laughter)
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Meetings are important, right?
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And collaboration is key
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to the success of any enterprise.
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And a well-run meeting
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can yield 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
over the last few years.
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And we're miserable.
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And we're miserable not because
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the other guy can't run a good meeting,
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it's because of MAS,
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our Mindless Accept Syndrome,
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which is a self-inflicted wound.
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Actually, I have evidence to prove
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that MAS is a global epidemic.
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Let me tell you why:
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A couple of years ago,
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I put a video on Youtube, and in the video,
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I acted out every terrible
conference call
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you've ever been on.
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It goes on for about five minutes,
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it has all the things
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that we hate about
really bad meetings.
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There's the moderator
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who has no idea how to
run the meeting.
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There are the participants
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who have no idea why they're there.
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The whole thing kind of collapses
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into this collaborative train wreck.
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And everybody leaves very angry.
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It's kinda funny.
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(Laughter)
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Let's take a quick look:
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[Our goal today is to come to agreement
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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.
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I'm working from home today.
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(Laughter)
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Hi, Joe. Thanks for joining us
today, great.
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I was just saying, we have a lot
people on the call
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who'd like to get through,
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so let's skip the roll call
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and I'm gonna dive right in.
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Our goal today is to come
to an agreement
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on a very important proposal.
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As a group, 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?
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I thought I heard a beep].
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Sound familiar?
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Yeah, it sounds familiar
to me, too.
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A couple weeks after
I put that online,
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500,000 people,
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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,
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it's still getting 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
companies in the world,
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companies that you've heard of
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but I won't name,
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have asked for my permission
to use this video
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In their new-hire training
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to teach their employees how
not to run a meeting
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at their company.
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And if the numbers there,
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there are a million views
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and is being used by all these companies,
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isn't enough proof
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that we have 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 everyday!
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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.
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And cried some more."
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(Laughter)
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This poor guy said,
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"My daily life until retirement
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or death,
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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
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all of these comments online
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is this fundamental belief
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that we are powerless
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to do anything other
than go to meetings
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and suffer through these
poorly run meetings
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and live to meet another day.
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But the truth is,
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we're not powerless at all.
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In fact, the cure for MAS
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is right here in our hands,
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it's right at our finger tips, 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
high school spanish,
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means something like "enough already,
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make it stop!"
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Here's how No MAS works,
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it's very simple, okay?
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First of all,
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the next time you get a
meeting invitation
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that doesn't have a lot of information
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in it at all,
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click the tentative button!
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It's okay, you're allowed,
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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 is there for you
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not to accept immediately.
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Then, get in touch with the person
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who asked you to the meeting.
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Tell them you're very excited
to support their work,
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ask them what the goal
of the meeting is,
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and tell them you're interested
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in learning 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
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a little more thoughtful
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about how they put together
meeting invitations.
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And you can make more
thoughtful decisions
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about accepting it.
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People might actually start
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sending out agendas, imagine?
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Or they might not have a conference call
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with 12 people to talk about a status
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when they could just do a quick
email and get it done with.
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People just might start to change
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their behavior because you changed yours.
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And they just might
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bring your chair back, too.
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No MAS!
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Thank you.
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(Applause).