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?"
Zamislite ovo: ponedeljak je ujutru, vi ste na poslu, pripremate se za radni dan, a lik kojeg znate sa hodnika, iz viđenja vam ulazi u kancelariju i krade stolicu. Ne kaže ni reč - samo je odgura sa sobom. Ne kaže vam zašto je odneo stolicu, pored svih ostalih stolica. Ne razmišlja o tome da vama treba stolica da biste uradili nešto na poslu. Ne biste to trpeli. Skrenuli biste pažnju. Pratili biste ga do njegove kancelarije i rekli biste: "Što baš moja stolica?"
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)
Okej, sad je utorak ujutru, na poslu ste, u kalendaru vam iskače termin za sastanak. (Smeh) Od žene, koju isto poznajete iz viđenja, tema je o projektu koji vam zvuči poznato. Ali nema plana rada. Nema informacije o tome zašto ste pozvani. Ali ipak prihvatate, i idete. Nakon ovog neproduktivnog zasedanja, vraćate se svom stolu, stanete nad njim i kažete sebi: "Kada bi mi mogli vratiti ova dva sata, zajedno sa mojom stolicom." (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)
Svaki dan dopuštamo kolegama, koji su inače mnogo dobri ljudi, da kradu od nas. Mislim na stvari puno vrednije od stolica. Pričam o vremenu. Vašem vremenu. U stvari, i verujem da smo u sred globalne epidemije nove strašne bolesti zvane SBP: Sindrom Bezumnog Prihvatanja (Smeh) Prvi simptom SBP-a počinje prihvatanjem sastanka, čim iskoči u kalendaru. (Smeh) To je samo refleks, ding, klik, bing - već ti je u kalendaru. "Žurim, već sam okasnio na sastanak." (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.
Sastanci su važni, zar ne? I saradnja je ključ za uspeh svakog preduzetništva. Iz dobrog sastanka se mogu izvući pozitivni svrsishodni rezultati. Ali sa globalizacijom i preovladavajućom informacionom tehnologijom, način na koji radimo se izuzetno, čak i dramatično promenio u poslednjih par godina. I očajni smo. (Smeh) Nismo očajni što onaj lik ne ume da vodi sastanak nego zbog SBP-a, Sindroma bezumnog prihvatanja, povrede koju smo sami sebi naneli.
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)
Inače, imam dokaze da je SPB epidemija svetskih razmera. Reći ću vam i zašto. Pre nekoliko godina, postavio sam snimak na Jutjub u kojem glumim scene svih groznih sastanaka ikada. I to traje nekih pet minuta, i sadrži sve stvari koje mrzimo na groznim sastancima. Tu je predsedavajući, koji nema pojma kako da vodi sastanak. Učesnici na sastanku, koji ne znaju zašto su tamo. Cela stvar se nekako uruši u jednu zajedničku katastrofu. Svi odlaze sa sastanka ljuti. Smešno je nekako. (Smeh) Hajde da bacimo pogled. (Video) Cilj nam je da dođemo do dogovora o vrlo bitnoj ponudi. Kao tim, moramo odlučiti da li - blu blup - Halo, ko nam se upravo javlja? Halo, ovde Džo. Radim od kuće danas. (Smeh) Ćao Džo. Hvala što si se pridružio, sjajno. Upravo govorim, imamo puno ljudi do kojih pokušavamo doći, tako da ću preskočiti prozivanje poimence, samo ću početi. Današnji cilj je da se dogovorimo o vrlo bitnoj ponudi. Kao tim, moramo odlučiti da li - blu, blup - (Smeh) Halo, ko nam se javlja? Ne? Mislio sam da sam čuo zvuk. (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.
Zvuči poznato? Da, i meni zvuči poznato. Nekoliko nedelja nakon što sam to stavio na internet, 500 000 ljudi u desetinama zemalja, bukvalno desetinama, je pogledalo ovaj video. Tri godine kasnije, i dalje ima hiljade pregleda svaki mesec. Sada je već blizu milion. Zapravo, neke od najvećih kompanija sveta, za koje ste čuli, ali koje neću imenovati su tražile moju dozvolu da koriste video za svoje zaposlene da ih nauče kako da ne vode sastanak na poslu. I ako svi ti brojevi - a ima milion pregleda od svih tih kompanija - nisu dovoljan dokaz da imamo globalni problem sa sastancima, postoje mase i mase komentara na internetu nakon što je video postavljen. Hiljade ljudi je pisalo stvari poput: "Bože, takav je bio moj današnji dan!" "Takav je moj svaki dan!" "Ovo je moj život." Jedan je napisao: "Smešno je jer je istina. Zastrašujuća, tužna, deprimirajuća istina koja me nasmejala do suza. I suza. I još malo suza. (Smeh) Ovaj siroti lik je napisao: "Ovo je moj život iz dana u dan, do penzije ili smrti, uzdah". Ovo su stvarni citati i stvarno je tužno.
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!"
Tema koja se prožima kroz sve ove komentare na internetu je zajedničko verovanje da smo nemoćni da uradimo išta osim odlaska na sastanke i da se patimo kroz te loše organizovane sastanke i preživimo do sledećeg. Ali istina je da uopšte nismo nemoćni. U stvari, lek za SBP je ovde u našim rukama. U vrhovima prstiju nam je, bukvalno. I zove se - no mas! (Smeh) Što znači, ako se dobro sećam španskog iz srednje, nešto poput: "Dosta više, prekini!"
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).
Evo kako No mas deluje. Veoma je jednostavno. Prvo, kada sledeći put dobijete poziv na sastanak koji nema puno informacija, kliknite na dugme Možda! Sve je u redu, smete to uraditi, zato i postoji. Pored je dugme Prihvati. Ili je to dugme Kasnije, koje god dugme vas ne tera da prihvatite. Onda, kontaktirajte osobu koja vas je pozvala na sastanak. Recite im da ste jako uzbuđeni da podržite njihov rad, pitajte ih šta je cilj njihovog sastanka i recite da vas interesuje da saznate kako da im pomognete da ostvare svoj cilj. Ako radimo ovo dovoljno često, i radimo to sa poštovanjem, ljudi će imati više obzira kada sazivaju te sastanke. I vi ćete obzirnije odlučivati koje sastanke ćete prihvatati. Možda ljudi počnu i da šalju planove rada. Zamislite! Ili neće sazivati dvanaestoro ljudi da pričaju o statusu kada mogu samo poslati mejl i završiti s time. Možda ljudi promene svoje ponašanje, ako vi promenite vaše. Možda vam čak i vrate stolicu jednom. (Smeh) No MAS! Hvala! (Aplauz)