Читать книгу Will there be Donuts?: Start a business revolution one meeting at a time - David Pearl - Страница 47

Really meeting helps us solve the problems we have and avoid bigger ones in future. It’s an engine of enterprise, past and future. It’s how we do deals, build things, make stuff happen. It makes us smarter than we can ever be by ourselves, helping us create value, better understand our world, lead richer lives and have better relationships. It’s how we can, hopefully, create common ground, resolve conflict, and prevent ourselves from boiling our planet or blowing ourselves into oblivion.

But will knowing this change things?

I think the ultimate argument for real meetings—the choice between genuine and fake—is about the quality of the lives we want to lead.

They say the quality of your life reflects what you are prepared to tolerate. If you can put up with lousy, endless meetings then you are certain to get more of them. I recommend clients become intolerant of “nearly meeting.” Allergies are trendy these days. Everyone has one. So why not become allergic, as an entire organization, to junk meetings? The thing about allergies (to gluten, peanuts, the fabric inside airline pillows) is that your body will let you know—in no uncertain terms—when any of that unhealthy stuff comes near. If we sneezed or broke out in a rash when someone suggested “nearly” meeting, we’d quickly train ourselves to seek out “really meeting” instead.

When McDonalds caused uproar by moving into the southern Italian town of Altamura in Apulia in 2001, local baker Luigi Digesu decided to take a stand. Five years later the juggernaut food chain admitted defeat and withdrew. They weren’t beaten back by protest, but by quality. Luigi had not set out to force McDonald’s to close down in any “bellicose spirit.” He had merely offered the 65,000 residents tasty panini filled with local ingredients like mortadella, mozzarella, basil, and chopped tomatoes, which they had overwhelmingly preferred to hamburgers and chicken nuggets. “It is a question of free choice,” concluded the baker.

When you try to change meetings in your company you may well face the same sort of arguments that Luigi and his slow-food companions faced. “Poor quality is cheaper” … “It’s not ideal but it’ll do” … “There isn’t enough quality to go around” … “We’re too busy to make the change” … “A whole industry is set up for low quality, high volume. High quality would be nice, but it’s not practical.”

The answer, as it was for Luigi, is to make your meetings so mouthwatering and wholesome that those unhealthy nearly meetings don’t stand a chance.

And how do you create meetings “to die for,” not die from? Read on!