ideen für ein bad
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 ofrecognize 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 informationabout why he took your chair out of all the other chairsthat are out there. doesn't acknowledge the factthat you might need your chair to get some work done today. you wouldn't stand forit. you'd make a stink. you'd follow that guyback to his cubicle and you'd say, "why my chair?" okay, so now it's tuesday morningand you're at the office, and a meeting invitation popsup in your calendar.
(laughter) and it's from this woman who youkind of know from down the hall, and the subject line references someproject that you heard a little bit about. but there's no agenda. there's no information about whyyou were invited to the meeting. and yet you accept themeeting invitation, and you go. and when this highlyunproductive session is over, you go back to your desk, and you stand at yourdesk and you say,
"boy, i wish i had those two hours back, like i wish i had my chair back." every day, we allow our coworkers, who are otherwise very,very nice people, to steal from us. and i'm talking about something farmore valuable than office furniture. i'm talking about time. your time. in fact, i believe that we are in the middleof a global epidemic
of a terrible new illnessknown as mas: mindless accept syndrome. the primary symptom ofmindless accept syndrome is just accepting a meeting invitationthe 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 latefor a meeting." (laughter) meetings are important, right? and collaboration is key tothe success of any enterprise. and a well-run meeting can yieldreally positive, actionable results.
but between globalization and pervasive information technology, the way that we work has really changed dramaticallyover the last few years. and we're miserable. (laughter) and we're miserable not because theother guy can't run a good meeting, it's because of mas, ourmindless accept syndrome, which is a self-inflicted wound. actually, i have evidence to provethat mas is a global epidemic.
let me tell you why. a couple of years ago, i put a videoon youtube, and in the video, i acted out every terribleconference call you've ever been on. it goes on for about five minutes, and it has all the things that wehate about really bad meetings. there's the moderator who hasno idea how to run the meeting. there are the participants whohave no idea why they're there. the whole thing kind of collapsesinto this collaborative train wreck. and everybody leaves very angry.
it's kind of funny. let's take a quick look. (video) our goal today is to come to anagreement 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. hi, joe. thanks forjoining us today, great. i was just saying, we have a lot of peopleon the call we'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 anagreement on a very important proposal. no? i thought i heard a beep. (laughter) sound familiar? yeah, it sounds familiarto me, too. a couple of 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 gettingthousands of views every month. it's close to about a million right now. and in fact, some of the biggestcompanies in the world, companies that you'veheard of but i won't name, have asked for my permission to usethis video in their new-hire training to teach their new employees hownot to run a meeting at their company. and if the numbers — there are a million views and it'sbeing used by all these companies —
aren't enough proof that we havea 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 every day!" "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 i cried some more." this poor guy said, "my daily life untilretirement or death, sigh." these are real quotes and it's real sad. a common theme running throughall of these comments online
is this fundamental beliefthat we are powerless to do anything otherthan go to meetings and suffer through thesepoorly run meetings and live to meet another day. but the truth is, we'renot powerless at all. in fact, the cure for masis right here in our hands. it's right at our fingertips, literally. it's something that i call â¡no mas! which, if i remember myhigh school spanish,
means something like,"enough already, make it stop!" here's how no masworks. it's very simple. first of all, the next time youget a meeting invitation that doesn't have a lotof 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 buttonis there for you not to accept immediately. then, get in touch with the personwho asked you to the meeting.
tell them you're very excitedto support their work, ask them what the goalof the meeting is, and tell them you're interested in learninghow you can help them achieve their goal. and if we do this often enough, and we do it respectfully, people might start to bea little bit more thoughtful about the way they put togethermeeting invitations. and you can make more thoughtfuldecisions about accepting it. people might actually startsending out agendas. imagine!
or they might not have a conference callwith 12 people to talk about a status when they could just do a quickemail and get it done with. people just might start to change theirbehavior because you changed yours. and they just might bringyour chair back, too. (laughter) no mas! thank you. (applause).