Forestil dig dette: Det er mandag morgen, du er på kontoret, du gør dig klar til dagens arbejde, og den her fyr, du på en måde genkender, kommer ind på dit kontor og stjæler din stol. Siger ikke et ord - ruller bare af sted med den. Giver ingen information, hvorfor han tog lige din stol ud af alle de andre stole. Anerkender ikke, at du måske har brug for stolen for at få lavet noget arbejde. Du ville ikke finde dig i det! Du ville følge efter ham til hans kontor, og du ville sige: "Hvorfor min stol?"
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?"
Okay, så nu er det tirsdag morgen, og du sidder på kontoret, og en mødeinvitation popper op i din kalender. Det er fra den kvinde, du på en måde kender fra længere nede ad gangen, og emnefeltet referer til et projekt, du har hørt en lille smule om. Men der er ingen dagsorden. Der er ingen information om hvorfor, du var inviteret til mødet. Og alligevel accepterer du invitationen og tager til mødet. Og når denne højst uproduktive session er ovre, går du tilbage til dit skrivebord, og du står ved det, og du siger: "Jeg ville ønske, jeg kunne få de to timer tilbage, ligesom jeg ville ønske, jeg fik min stol tilbage."
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)
Hver dag tillader vi vores kolleger, som ellers er rigtig venlige personer, at stjæle fra os. Jeg snakker om noget langt vigtigere end kontormøbler. Jeg snakker om tid. Din tid. Rent faktisk, tror jeg på, at vi er midt i en global epidemi af en frygtelig sygdom kendt som "MAS": Mindless Accept Syndrome (Hjernedødt Accept Syndrom) Det primære symptom af Mindless Accept Syndrome er bare at acceptere en mødeinvitation øjeblikket det popper op i din kalender. Den er en ufrivillig refleks - ding, klik - det er i din kalender. "Må gå, er allerede sent for et møde."
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)
Møder er vigtige, ikke sandt? Og samarbejde er nøglen til succes i ethvert foretagende. Og et veldrevet møde kan give positive, handlingsrettede resultater. Men mellem globalisering og vidtspredt IT, har måden, vi arbejder på, ændret sig drastisk over de sidste par år. Og vi har det elendigt. Vi har det ikke elendigt, fordi den anden fyr ikke kan holde et godt møde. Det er på grund af MAS, vores Mindless Accept Syndrome, som er et selvforskyldt sår.
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.
Rent faktisk har jeg bevis til at bevise, at MAS er en global epidemi. Lad mig fortælle jer hvorfor. For et par år siden lagde jeg en video op på YouTube, og i den video fremførte jeg ethvert forfærdeligt konference- opkald, du nogensinde har deltaget i. Det fortsætter ca. 5 min., og det indeholder alle de ting, vi hader ved virkelig dårlige møder. Der er ordstyreren, der ikke aner, hvordan man skal styre et møde. Der er deltagerne, der ikke aner, hvorfor de er der. Det hele kollapser, Og alle forlader stedet arrigt. Det er egentligt lidt morsomt. Lad os tage et hurtigt kig. (Video) Vores mål i dag er at komme til enighed om et meget vigtigt forslag. Som en gruppe skal vi beslutte om — bloop bloop — Hej, hvem sluttede sig lige til? Hej, det er Joe. Jeg arbejder hjemmefra i dag. Hej Joe. Tak for at være med i dag. Godt, jeg var ved at sige, at vi har mange med på opkaldet, så lad os skippe navnerunden og gå igang. Vores mål i dag er at komme til enighed om et meget vigtigt forslag. Som gruppe skal vi beslutte om — bloop bloop — Hej, hvem sluttede sig lige til? Nej? Jeg syntes, jeg hørte et bip.
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)
Lyder bekendt? Ja, det lyder også bekendt for mig. Et par uger efter, jeg lagde det online, var der 500.000 folk fra snesevis af lande, jeg mener snesevis af lande, der så denne her video. Og tre år efter får den stadig tusindvis af visninger hver måned. Den er tæt på omkring en million lige nu. Nogle af de største firmaer i verden, firmaer man kender, men jeg ikke vil nævne, har spurgt om tilladelse til at bruge videoen til deres optræning for at lære deres nye ansatte, hvordan man ikke skal holde et møde i deres firma. Og hvis tal — en million visninger, og alle firmaerne — ikke er nok bevis på at vi har et globalt problem med møder, så er der mange, mange tusinde kommentarer opslået online efter videoen kom op. Tusinder af folk skrev ting som: "OMG, det var min dag i dag!" "Det var min dag, hver dag!" "Det her er mit liv." En skrev: "Det er sjovt, fordi det er sandt. Uhyggeligt og deprimerende sandt. Det fik mig til at grine til jeg græd. Og jeg græd. Og jeg græd noget mere." Denne her stakkel sagde: "Mit daglige liv indtil pension eller døden, suk." Disse er virkelige citater, og det er virkeligt trist.
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.
Et fælles tema for alle disse kommentarer online er den fundamentale tro på, at vi er magtesløse overfor at gøre andet end at gå til møder og lide gennem disse dårligt organiserede møder og leve for at møde den næste dag. Men sandheden er, at vi slet ikke er magtesløse. Faktisk er kuren for MAS lige her i vores egne hænder. Den er lige ved vores fingerspidser. Det er noget, jeg kalder: "¡No MAS!" Som, hvis jeg kan huske mit gymnasiespansk, betyder noget a la: "Så er det nok, få det til at stoppe!"
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!"
Her er hvordan No MAS fungerer. Det er meget simpelt. Først og fremmest: Næste gang du modtager en mødeinvitation, der ikke indeholder meget information overhovedet, klik på "usikker"-knappen! Det er okay; du må godt. Det er derfor, den er der. Lige ved siden af "accepter". Eller "måske"-knappen, eller hvad end der er der, så du ikke accepterer nu. Få fat i personen, der inviterede dig til mødet Sig, at du er begejstret for at støtte op om arbejdet, spørg hvad målet med mødet er, og sig, at du er interesseret i at lære, hvordan du kan hjælpe dem nå det mål. Og hvis vi gør det ofte nok, og vi gør det respektfuldt, vil folk måske begynde at tænke lidt mere over den måde de sammen- sætter mødeinvitationerne. Og du kan træffe bedre beslutninger om at acceptere dem. Folk vil måske begynde at tilsende dagsordener. Tænk engang! Eller de vil måske droppe konference- opkaldene med 12 personer, når det kunne have været gjort med en hurtig email i stedet. Folk ville måske begynde at ændre deres adfærd, fordi du ændrede din. Og de vil måske også give dig din stol tilbage. No MAS! Tak.
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.