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?"
Predstavljajte si tole: ponedeljek zjutraj je, v službi ste, vstopate v delovni dan in potem sodelavec, ki ga bežno poznate, stopi k vaši pisalni mizi in vam ukrade stol. Nič ne reče, samo odpelje ga. Ne pove vam, zakaj je vzel vaš stol namesto katerega drugega. Ne vzame v zakup, da vi stol morda potrebujete, da bi lahko opravili svoje delo. Tega si ne dovolite. Ukrepali boste. Sledili boste temu tipu in vprašali: "Zakaj moj stol?"
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)
Recimo, da je torek in ste v pisarni, na koledarju se pojavi vabilo na sestanek. (smeh) Od sodelavke je, ki jo bežno poznate, tema sestanka pa je projekt, o katerem ste nekaj malega slišali. Ni pa dnevnega reda. Ni informacije, zakaj ste vabljeni na sestanek. A vseeno sprejmete in greste. In ko je te povsem neproduktivne muke konec, greste nazaj za pisalno mizo, obstojite in si rečete: "Ko bi vsaj dobil nazaj tisti dve uri in svoj stol." (smeh)
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)
Vsak dan sodelavcem, ki so sicer zelo zelo prijetni ljudje, dovoljujemo, da kradejo. In to dosti vrednejše stvari od pisarniške opreme. Govorim o času. Vašem času. Pravzaprav verjamem, da smo sredi globalne epidemije grozne nove bolezni, znane kot MAS: sindrom množičnega avtomatskega sprejema. (smeh) Prvi simptom tega sindroma je sprejetje vabila na sestanek, takoj ko se pojavi na koledarju. (smeh) Gre za avtomatski refleks - ding, klik, bing - in je sprejeto. "Iti moram, že zamujam na sestanek." (smeh)
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.
Sestanki so pomembni, ne? In sodelovanje je temelj uspeha vsakega podjetja. Dobro voden sestanek lahko prinese res pozitivne, uresničljive rezultate. A zaradi globalizacije in vseprisotne informacijske tehnologije se je način dela v zadnjih letih dramatično spremenil. In nas onesrečil. (smeh) Nesrečni nismo zato, ker nekdo ne zna voditi sestanka, ampak zaradi sindroma MAS, ki si ga sami zadajamo.
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)
Lahko dokažem, da je MAS globalna epidemija. Povedal vam bom, zakaj. Pred nekaj leti sem na Youtubu objavil video, v katerem sem zaigral vse grozne konference, na katerih sem bil. Dolg je okoli pet minut, in vsebuje vse, kar sovražimo pri sestankih. Moderatorja, ki nima pojma, kako voditi. Udeležence, ki ne vedo, zakaj so tam. Vse skupaj razpade v razbitino sodelovanja. In vsi odidejo zelo jezni. Na nek način je smešno. (smeh) Poglejmo na hitro. Naš cilj je uskladiti se o pomembnem predlogu. Kot skupina se moramo odločiti, ali ... bip bip ... Zdravo, kdo se je pridružil? Joe. Danes delam od doma. (smeh) Pozdravljen Joe. Hvala, da si tu. Ravno sem razlagal, da imamo veliko ljudi na zvezi, zato se ne bomo predstavljali, ampak šli kar k bistvu. Danes se moramo uskladiti o pomembnem predlogu. Kot skupina moramo odločiti, ali ... bip bip... (smeh) Kdo je prišel? Nihče? Mislil sem, da je zapiskalo. (smeh)
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.
Se vam zdi znano? Ja, meni tudi. Nekaj tednov po objavi je 500,000 ljudi iz na ducate držav, res na ducate držav, videlo ta video. Tri leta kasneje ima še vedno na tisoče ogledov mesečno. Zdaj je blizu milijona. In nekatera največja svetovna podjetja, ki jih poznate in jih ne bom imenoval, so me prosila, če lahko video pokažejo na treningih za novince, da bi jim pokazali, kako ne voditi sestanka. In če številke - milijon ogledov, vsa ta podjetja... niso zadosten dokaz, da imamo globalni problem s sestanki, je na spletu na tisoče komentarjev, ki so sledili objavi videa. Na tisoče ljudi je napisalo: "Moj bog, tak je bil danes moj dan!" "Tak je moj vsakdan!" "To je moje življenje." Nekdo je napisal: "Smešno je, ker je resnično. Grozljivo, žalostno, depresivno resnično. Smejal sem se do solz. In jokal. In še bolj jokal." (smeh) Neki ubožec je dejal: "Moj vsakdan do penzije ali smrti, ah." To so pravi citati in to je res žalostno.
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!"
Skupna tema teh spletnih komentarjev je temeljno prepričanje, da nimamo moči, da bi storili kaj drugega, kot šli na sestanke, pretrpeli slabo vodene sestanke in preživeli do naslednjega dne. A v resnici sploh nismo nemočni. Zdravilo za MAS je v naših rokah. Naših prstih, pravzaprav. Temu rečem: No MAS! (smeh) Kar, če se prav spomnim srednješolske španščine, pomeni približno: "Nehajte že, ustavite to!"
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).
Tako deluje "No MAS". Enostavno je. Na naslednje vabilo na sestanek, ki nima dovolj informacij, odgovorite z "mogoče". To smete, saj zato ta možnost obstaja. Takoj poleg ikone "sprejmem" je. Gotovo obstaja kak tak gumb, s katerim vam ni treba tako sprejeti. Potem stopite v stik s tistim, ki vas je povabil. Povejte, da boste z veseljem pomagali, vprašajte za namen sestanka in dodajte, da bi radi vedeli, kako lahko pomagate. Če bomo to storili dovoljkrat in s spoštovanjem, bodo ljudje morda razmislili o tem, kako pošiljajo vabila na sestanke. In vi boste bolj premišljeno odločali o tem, ali boste sprejeli. Morda bodo ljudje celo začeli pošiljati dnevne rede. Zamislite si! Ali pa ne bo preko konferenčnih klicev 12 ljudi govorilo o statusu, če se to lažje uredi z elektronsko pošto. Morda bodo ljudje spremenili vedenje, ker ste vi spremenili svoje. In morda vam bodo celo vrnili stol. (smeh) No MAS! Hvala. (aplavz)