How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings

Picture this:

It's Monday morning,

you're at the office,

you're settling in for the day at work,

and this guy,

that you sort of recognize
from down the hall,

walks right into your cubicle

and he steals your chair.

Doesn't say a word--

just rolls away with it.

Doesn't give you any information

about why he took your chair

out of all the other chairs
that are out there.

Doesn't acknowledge the fact that you

might need your chair

to get some work done today.

You wouldn't stand for it.

You'd make a stink.

You'd follow that guy
back to his cubicle

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

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

and a meeting invitation pops
up in your calendar.

(Laughter)

And it's from this woman

that you kind of know
from down the hall,

and the subject line
references some project

that you heard a little bit about.

But there's no agenda.

There's no information about why

you were invited to the meeting.

And yet you accept the meeting invitation

and you go.

And when this highly
unproductive session is over,

you go back to your desk,

and you stand at your
desk and you say,

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

like I wish I had my chair back."

(Laughter)

Everyday,

we allow our co-workers,

who are otherwise very,
very nice people,

to steal from us.

And I'm talking about something

far more valuable than office furniture.

I'm talking about time.

Your time.

In fact, I believe that

we are in the middle
of a global epidemic

of a terrible new illness
known as MAS:

Mindless Accept Syndrome.

(Laughter)

The primary symptom of Mindless Accept Syndrome

is just accepting a meeting invitation

the minute it pops up in your calendar.

It's an involuntary reflex--

ding, click, bing--

it's in your calendar,

"Gotta go, I'm already late for a meeting."

(Laughter)

Meetings are important, right?

And collaboration is key

to the success of any enterprise.

And a well-run meeting

can yield really positive,
actionable results.

But between globalization,

and pervasive information technology,

The way that we work

has really changed dramatically
over the last few years.

And we're miserable.

And we're miserable not because

the other guy can't run a good meeting,

it's because of MAS,

our Mindless Accept Syndrome,

which is a self-inflicted wound.

Actually, I have evidence to prove

that MAS is a global epidemic.

Let me tell you why:

A couple of years ago,

I put a video on Youtube, and in the video,

I acted out every terrible
conference call

you've ever been on.

It goes on for about five minutes,

it has all the things

that we hate about
really bad meetings.

There's the moderator

who has no idea how to
run the meeting.

There are the participants

who have no idea why they're there.

The whole thing kind of collapses

into this collaborative train wreck.

And everybody leaves very angry.

It's kinda funny.

(Laughter)

Let's take a quick look:

[Our goal today is to come to agreement

on a very important proposal.

As a group, we need to decide if

--bloop bloop--

Hi, who just joined?

Hi, it's Joe.

I'm working from home today.

(Laughter)

Hi, Joe. Thanks for joining us
today, great.

I was just saying, we have a lot
people on the call

who'd like to get through,

so let's skip the roll call

and I'm gonna dive right in.

Our goal today is to come
to an agreement

on a very important proposal.

As a group, need to decide if

--bloop bloop--

(Laughter)

Hi, who just joined?

No?

I thought I heard a beep].

Sound familiar?

Yeah, it sounds familiar
to me, too.

A couple weeks after
I put that online,

500,000 people,

in dozens of countries,

I mean dozens of countries,

watched this video.

And three years later,

it's still getting thousands of
views every month.

It's close to about a million right now.

And in fact, some of the biggest
companies in the world,

companies that you've heard of

but I won't name,

have asked for my permission
to use this video

In their new-hire training

to teach their employees how
not to run a meeting

at their company.

And if the numbers there,

there are a million views

and is being used by all these companies,

isn't enough proof

that we have a global
problem with meetings,

there are the many, many thousands

of comments posted online

after the video went up.

Thousands of people wrote things like,

"OMG, that was my day today!"

That was my day everyday!

This is my life.

One guy wrote,

"It's funny because it's true.

Eerily, sadly, depressingly true.

It made me laugh until I cried.

And cried.

And cried some more."

(Laughter)

This poor guy said,

"My daily life until retirement

or death,

sigh ."

These are real quotes

and it's real sad.

A common theme running through

all of these comments online

is this fundamental belief

that we are powerless

to do anything other
than go to meetings

and suffer through these
poorly run meetings

and live to meet another day.

But the truth is,

we're not powerless at all.

In fact, the cure for MAS

is right here in our hands,

it's right at our finger tips, literally.

It's something that I call "No MAS".

(Laughter)

Which, if I remember my
high school spanish,

means something like "enough already,

make it stop!"

Here's how No MAS works,

it's very simple, okay?

First of all,

the next time you get a
meeting invitation

that doesn't have a lot of information

in it at all,

click the tentative button!

It's okay, you're allowed,

that's why it's there.

It's right next to the accept button,

or the maybe button or whatever
button is there for you

not to accept immediately.

Then, get in touch with the person

who asked you to the meeting.

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

ask them what the goal
of the meeting is,

and tell them you're interested

in learning how you can help
them achieve their goal.

And if we do this often enough,

and we do it respectfully,

people might start to be

a little more thoughtful

about how they put together
meeting invitations.

And you can make more
thoughtful decisions

about accepting it.

People might actually start

sending out agendas, imagine?

Or they might not have a conference call

with 12 people to talk about a status

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

People just might start to change

their behavior because you changed yours.

And they just might

bring your chair back, too.

No MAS!

Thank you.

(Applause).