Will There be Donuts? Start a Business Revolution One Meeting at a Time

If you've ever found yourself wondering where your day went because you sat in one pointless meeting after another, then this book is for you. This goes for meetings of two people, 20, or 200. And, these tips apply to meetings with your CEO, your clients, or your family.

David Pearl is a business consultant who's transformed meetings at some of the world's largest companies.

He's also spent a good part of his career in the performing arts. With this background, he's made sure his book isn't nearly as boring as an average meeting can be.

"Will There Be Donuts" is full of pop culture references and is written in an easy, conversational style. It's a book about meetings, but it reads more like a movie. There are real strategies in here, but also plenty of tips that are playful and could really build morale in your team.

So, keep listening to find out why approaching meetings as a living thing can transform the entire process, how to discover the true intention of your meetings, and why creating a virtual audience for your next meeting can add significance and power.

"Will There Be Donuts" is divided into five long chapters.

In chapter one, the author outlines what happens during most meetings. He calls this "nearly meeting."

In chapter two, the author talks about the value of really meeting. Here you learn the anatomy of meetings, and in chapter three you learn how to design your meetings better. Chapter four covers seven types of meeting, and how to hold them. And the last chapter looks at how you can change the meeting culture in your organization to get these positive changes to stick long-term.

Let's look at chapter one, about "nearly meeting." Nearly meeting happens when the participants fail to get any real value out of coming together.

In nearly meetings, problems are only half solved. The issues are only partially understood. And they come close to being useful. But, they're not useful. These are the types of meetings that the author spends the rest of the book trying to transform.

What's sobering is how much ineffective meetings could be costing your business. One of the author's past clients found that they were wasting $72,000,000 a year on ineffective meetings.

Just do a quick calculation. Look at how many hours per week you spend in pointless meetings. Multiply that number by how many weeks you work a year, then times that amount by your salary, in hour terms.

Multiply that by the number of people on your team or in your organization, and you get a rough idea of how expensive this can be.

Real meetings can be the polar opposite of these money-wasting episodes. In real meetings, people can build on each others' ideas. Participants leave with a clearer picture than when they arrived. Real meetings are inclusive, where people mean what they say and say what they mean. When was the last time you were in a meeting like that?

So, we know that ‘nearly meeting' is a huge waste of time. And, it could be costing your team or organization a lot of money. But what can you do differently to make things better?

Before you answer this question, you have to look at what your meetings are. The author dissects the anatomy of a meeting in chapter three. Once you know what's going on behind the scenes in your meetings, you can design them better from the ground up.
To start, the author encourages you to think of meetings not as things, but as living objects.

This shift in thinking is simple but powerful. When you see a meeting as a living thing, you might be more respectful of it. You stop treating it as a disposable commodity. And you start to notice that, when you take care of it, it repays your efforts. And, you realize that shutting it in a windowless, airless room might not be the best idea.

The author says that he looks at a six-person meeting as having seven participants. Six people, plus the meeting itself. It sounds a bit strange, but here's his reasoning.

He says that if something goes wrong, he asks people not to blame each other, but look at what the meeting needs. Is the meeting running out of energy? Does it need a break? Is it overheated?

This shift in awareness can refocus participants and help keep the meeting alive and healthy.

The author suggests we pay attention to four key areas of your meeting. These are Intent, Content, Connect, and Context.

Let's look at Intent first. The Intent is the why of your meeting. It's not what the meeting will be about. It's not the objective. It goes deeper than that. The Intent is the real reason why you're all sitting at the table.

The author says that people often confuse objective with intention. Here's a good example of how they're different.

When you buy a lottery ticket, your objective is to win. Your intention is what you're going to do with your winnings.

Before you schedule your next meeting, use the "…so that…" exercise to find the meeting's intention. Just keep tacking on the words "so that" to each sentence. So, imagine your next meeting's objective is to share information, so that…"

When you add "so that," you realize that you're meeting so that all your people have the same information. So that…you're all on the same page. So that…you avoid errors and make better decisions.

You keep adding "so that" until you hit the bottom. This is the why of your meeting. Your Intention.

Now, there might be meetings that never really hit a bottom. Or, you might uncover an intention that's a bit irrelevant. When this happens, the meeting is probably a waste of time and should be culled.

The author says you can also use the "so that" technique to help your team find their driving purpose. We really like this bit of insight. It will be useful to anyone who's leading a team, whether they organize meetings or not.

Once you uncover the intention of your meetings, you can save time by clustering all your meetings with the same or similar intention together.

The author offers great advice throughout this chapter, looking in turn at the four main elements of meetings he's identified.

Take, for example, the fourth element: context. Context creates meaning, and the author says that meetings are just experiences framed by context. This is why it's important to put your meeting in context right when you begin.

One way to do this is to hand out blank index cards to everyone at the meeting. Ask them to consider this question. "Who, aside from the people here, has a stake in the outcome of this meeting?"

Encourage everyone to think beyond traditional boundaries here. Some of the stakeholders could be absent team members, partner companies, shareholders, customers, future customers, or even your loved ones.

Next, ask them to draw a face to go with these names, and put the cards on sticks so they can be propped upright.

The author admits this strategy sounds a bit weird, but doing this creates a virtual audience for the meeting. This can really motivate everyone present, because it drives home how significant the meeting is for all these people. It's also a fun and relevant way to get a meeting started.

Here's another tip we liked. Before your next informational meeting, make sure that everyone gets the reading materials or research to be discussed in advance. And, stress that it has to be read before the meeting. That way, you can start the meeting with questions, instead of poring over the material. The author says this strategy can trim most information meetings down to ten minutes.

Now we should say here that this approach isn't always appropriate. Sometimes there's a real benefit to going over material in the meeting, as a group. It can iron out misunderstandings and, ultimately, be a good use of time. It depends on who's involved and the matter in hand, so best to use your judgment about what would work best for you.

The author offers some interesting suggestions for changing the way you meet. Chances are, during a meeting you and your team sit together at a big table, inside a relatively bland conference room. Sounds pretty standard, right?

There are several stories in the book about how some people are getting rid of this stereotype entirely. One entrepreneur the author knows bought an old school bus and turned it into a fully equipped mobile boardroom. Whenever he and his team have a meeting, they take a ride.

A mobile boardroom might work in certain situations, but it's not practical for most organizations. It's a good example of the fresh thinking presented in the book, which may be original and fun, but is only appropriate in certain situations. Readers can take the general idea and scale it back to what works for them.

For instance, why not hold a meeting at a local bookstore or coffee shop? Hold a meeting while all of you walk outside, or take a train ride. Changing the space and getting everyone moving can add energy and motivation to your meetings. You don't need to buy an old bus to make that happen.

All of this might sound well and good. But what do you do for virtual meetings? The author has some great advice for these too.

First, virtual meetings and conference calls have the same basic requirements that physical meetings do. You need to make people understand why they're there, where they're going, and who is there with them.

The author explains that talk radio hosts are especially good at this. Listen to your local talk radio station to hear how they keep listeners oriented to what's going on. Then, practice running your next virtual meeting or conference call like a radio phone-in show.

Content is another important element in your meetings. And while it's important to plan your content, the author says you shouldn't write an agenda or a To-Do list. This is because most people put too many things on these lists, and this can kill the energy in your meeting. Instead, think of your meeting as a ‘scenario'. A scenario is a very basic structure that leaves you plenty of room to improvise.

This might sound a bit scary, but the author says we shouldn't let fear play a role in planning a meeting. It's tempting to think that people are going to hate the new format, or they won't want to try something new. But this negative thinking can dismiss some really creative ideas.

Fear-based planning keeps you safe. It's low risk. It's predictable. And while the author isn't saying that you should throw caution to the wind and schedule your next meeting on top of a heli-pad, he is saying that you should let go of the reins a little. Instead of focusing on what your meeting should look like, with a strict agenda, focus instead on what's actually happening.

So, what's our last word on "Will There Be Donuts?"

We loved this book. It's full of insight and good ideas that can really transform your meetings, and we only covered a fraction of what's in here. The author packed the book full of practical strategies and useful tips, and we think it has a lot of value for anyone who's tired of sitting in one boring meeting after another.

More than that, it's a fun read. The author's energy and humor shine through on every page, and at times he's downright hilarious.

He blasts traditional meetings with everything he's got, and you can't help but laugh while he rants about things like holding important meetings in hotel conference rooms. He describes these as endless, low-ceilinged, airless, windowless rooms with poor air conditioning and worse sound insulation. The fact that most companies pay enormous sums of money to try to do real work in these spaces is beyond him.

A few of the author's suggestions are rather eccentric and should only be applied in certain situations, after a lot of careful thought. But in general, the book strikes a good balance between practical and entertaining, and we didn't want to put it down.

"Will There Be Donuts," by David Pearl, is published by HarperCollins.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.