SAMBA Blog: I'm the newest author on The Domino Project

For the past 4 months I’ve been quietly writing a book.

And today I can officially announce that my book, Read This Before Our Next Meeting will be released by the Domino Project on August 3rd, 2011.

I’m a little bit in shock. I’ll be joining an elite group of past Domino authors: Seth Godin, Steven Pressfield, Derek Sivers; Giants whom I idolize, and have no business sitting at the same table with.

So I'll stand.

Meetings are broken. You know that. Many of you are spending 30%, 50%, some of you as much as 60% of your day inside of meetings. Meetings that are pointless, agonizing, and drain the vitality from your soul.

Sound about right?

But if you thought it was just your organization, think again. The meeting problem is pervasive. As a former IT Advisor for Ernst & Young, I spent countless hours sitting in on the meetings of Fortune 1000 companies all across the country (and I barely survived). These organizations (save a few exceptions--thank god) had meeting cultures that were attrocious.

But it's not the inconvenience to me or any individual which meetings might cause that has me so agitated; No it's the impact to the organization. What has me most frustrated is watching organizations that have amazing people and brilliant ideas fail to bring them to the world because meetings stand in the way. Ineffective and excessive meetings create a culture of compromise and kill an organization's sense of urgency. Great work rarely survives through the bureaucracy, groupthink, and indecision that pollutes these sessions. After a while individuals learn to not bother trying.

Once a reason for us to complain about not getting to happy hour on time, the meeting problem is now limiting our potential to do game changing work…the kind that makes the world better for all of us.

I can't stand by and watch any longer. This has to change. I’m taking this on…with a fury.

Let's go.

I’m certainly not the first author to write a book on meetings, but I hope to be the last. My book is different. For two reasons.

I know the secret. All along, we’ve been trying to solve the wrong problem.

Meetings aren’t the problem, they’re the solution to the real problem. The real problem quietly hides beneath the surface. (I explain this secret, the real problem at my new site ModernMeetingStandard.com)
I’m working with the amazing guys at Domino to spread my idea. The Domino platform has already proven itself to be a force to be reckoned with in book publishing. It’s allowing provocative manifestos to get into the hands of enthusiastic readers who want to read, want to change, and want to share. This is critical, because if we really want a modern meetings revolution, we need a lot of people to join. It’s not enough that you change the way you do meetings, your colleagues have to as well. If a critical mass of us can enthusiastically adopt a new standard for meetings, others will have no choice.

This is a new beginning for me. An exciting one.

I’ve been blogging at this site for over 2 years now and many of you have read, loyally, and I thank you.

But now my new home base will be at ModernMeetingStandard.com. (I may occasionally still post here as well but if you want to catch me regularly, come to my new site).

I hope you’ll go there right now. You can read a post I just wrote (Title: A Call for Revolution) that goes into more depth about the meeting crisis that’s before us, and the solution: I call it the Modern Meeting.

I hope you'll subscribe to my new blog via e-mail (see the signup box on the top right of the homepage) or of course via RSS. In the coming weeks I’ll be updating subscribers of ModernMeetingStandard.com with articles, exclusive info about my upcoming book, a whole bunch of other goodies, and how you can contribute to the modern meetings revolution and make a difference in your organization.

Let’s go.