Zamislite ovo: ponedjeljak je. Vi ste u uredu. Pripremate se za radni dan i kolega kojeg poznajete dolazi do vašeg stola i krade vam stolicu. Ne kaže vam ni riječi - samo ode s njom. Ne kaže vam razlog zbog čega je uzeo baš vašu stolicu od toliko drugih. Nije ga briga da li vi trebate stolicu da obavite današnji posao. Vi to ne bi trpjeli, nego bi napravili frku. Pratili biste tog kolegu do njegovog stola i upitali ga "Zašto moja stolica?".
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?"
Utorak je, nalazite se u svom uredu i dobijate pozivnicu u vašem kalendaru. (Smijeh) Pozivnica je od kolegice koju poznajete i radi se o projektu o kojem ste čuli. Ali ne sadrži nikakav dnevni red. Nema informacija o tome zašto ste baš vi pozvani na sastanak. Ali ipak prihvatite pozivnicu i odlazite. Nakon sastanka, vraćate se na svoje mjesto i razmišljate o tome kako biste željeli da imate ta dva sata, koliko je trajao sastanak, kao što biste željeli vašu stolicu nazad. (Smijeh)
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 who 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)
Svaki dan, mi dopuštamo svojim kolegama, koji su inače ljubazni, da kradu od nas. I govorim o stvarima koje su veće vrijednosti nego kancelarijski namještaj. Govorim o vremenu. Vašem vremenu. Ustvari vjerujem, da smo usred globalne epidemije poznate kao BPS: Bezumni Prihvatajući Sindrom. (Smijeh) Primarni simptom BPS je prihvatanje pozivnice za sastanak čim se ona pojavi na vašem kalendaru. (Smijeh) To je nenamjerni refleks kojim prihvatate da sudjelujete na sastanku, "Moram ići, zakasnio sam na sastanak." (Smijeh)
Every day, we allow our coworkers, 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. (Laughter) It's an involuntary reflex — ding, click, bing — it's in your calendar, "Gotta go, I'm already late for a meeting." (Laughter)
Sastanci su važni, zar ne? Kolaboracija je ključ uspjeha bilo koje organizacije. A dobar sastanak može rezultirati pozitivnim rezultatima. Globalizacija i informacione tehnologije promjenili su način na koji mi radimo. Osjećamo se nesretno. (Smijeh) Razlog našeg osjećanja nije kolega koji ne zna da vodi dobar sastanak. Razlog je sindrom BPS, rana koju smo sami sebi nanijeli.
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. (Laughter) 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.
Imam dokaze da je BPS globalna epidemija. Reći ću vam zašto. Prije par godina postavio sam video na Youtube-u, u kojem sam odglumio konferencijski poziv na najgori mogući način. Poziv je trajao oko 5 minuta. To su one stvari koje mrzimo na sastancima. Tu je moderator koji ne zna da vodi sastanak, sudionici, koji ne znaju zbog čega su tu, sastanak, gdje sudionici nisu produktivni i sa kog svi odlaze veoma ljuti. U neku ruku je i smiješno. (Smijeh) Pogledajmo. (Video) Naš cilj danas jeste da dođemo do važnog dogovora. Kao grupa moramo odlučiti, bloop, bloop. Zdravo, upravo smo se uključili u raspravu. Zdravo, Joe je. Radim od kuće danas. (Smijeh) Zdravo, Joe. Hvala što si nam se pridružio danas. Imamo dosta ljudi na čekanju koji žele da se uključe u raspravu. Preskočimo formularnosti, preći ću na stvar. Naš cilj danas jeste da dođemo do važnog dogovora. Kao grupa moramo odlučiti bloop, bloop. (Smijeh) Zdravo, ko se uključio? Ne, učinilo mi se da sam čuo zvuk. (Smijeh)
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, and 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 kind of funny. (Laughter) Let's take a quick look. (Video) Our goal today is to come to an 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 of people on 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 an agreement on a very important proposal. As a group, we need to decide if — bloop bloop — (Laughter) Hi, who just joined? No? I thought I heard a beep. (Laughter)
Zvuči vam poznato? Kao i meni. Nakon nekoliko sedmica, i postavljanja videa online, preko 500.000 ljudi širom svijeta je pogledalo ovaj video. Tri godine nakon toga, i dalje dobija par hiljada pregleda mjesečno. Približava se cifri od milion pregleda. Ustvari, neke od najvećih kompanija, kompanije koje sigurno znate, koje neću spominjati, tražile su moju dozvolu da koriste video u svrhu trening- sesije sa svojim zaposlenicima o temi "Kako ne voditi sastanak". Ako vam te brojke od milion pregleda i upotreba video materijala od strane poznatih kompanija nije dovoljan dokaz da imamo globalni problem, postoji preko hiljadu komentara koji su objavljeni, nakon što je video postavljen. Hiljade ljudi je pisalo slično ovome, "OMG, takav je bio moj dan danas!" "Takav je moj svaki dan!" "Ovo je moj život!" Jedna osoba je napisala, "Ovo je smiješno, zbog toga što je istinito!" Natjeralo me na smijeh, dok nisam zaplakao. (Smijeh) Jedan gospodin je napisao, "Moj dnevni život do penzionisanja ili smrti". To su stvarne rečenice koje su tužne.
Sound familiar? Yeah, it sounds familiar to 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 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 new employees how not to run a meeting at their company. And if the numbers — there are a million views and it's being used by all these companies — aren'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 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." (Laughter) This poor guy said, "My daily life until retirement or death, sigh." These are real quotes and it's real sad.
Zajedničko za sve komentare jeste vjerovanje da smo nemoćni da radimo ništa drugo, nego da idemo na sastanke loše sastanke, i tako iz dana u dan. Ali istina je da nismo nemoćni. Rješenje za sindorom BPS je u našim rukama. Bukvalno se nalazi nadomak naših prstiju. Zove se "NE BPS! sindrom, (Smijeh) što na španskom, ukoliko se sjećam svojih srednjoškolskih dana znači: "Prestani!".
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 fingertips, 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!"
"NE BPS " sistem funcioniše na sljedeći način. Sljedeći put kada vas pozovu na sastanak o kojem nemate mnogo infomacija, pritisnite "čekanje na odgovor". Slobodno! Zbog toga i postoji. Odmah je pored "prihvatam". Ili bilo koje drugo dugme, samo ne prihvatajte odmah. Potražite osobu koja vam je poslala pozivnicu. Recite im da podržavate njihov rad, pitajte ih koji je povod vašeg sastanka, i recite da ste spremni da im pomognete da postignu svoj cilj. Ukoliko to budemo radili svakodnevnije i sa dozom respekta. Možda će kolege razmisliti o tome koga će zvati i šta će biti predmet sastanaka. A vi ćete razmisliti o tome da li ćete prihvatiti pozivnicu. Možda će vam početi slati i dnevni red sastanaka. Zamislite! Možda neće imati konferencijske pozive sa 12 osoba, nego će takve stvari rješavati putem e-maila. Možda će pokušati promijeniti svoje ponašanje, zbog vašeg. I možda dobijete svoju stolicu nazad. (Smijeh) Recite, "NE BPS" sindromu. Hvala vam. (Aplauz)
Here's how No MAS works. It's very simple. 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 bit more thoughtful about the way 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. (Laughter) No MAS! Thank you. (Applause).