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?"
想像一下 星期一早上 你走進辦公室 準備開始一天的工作, 突然間有個同事,一個你好像認得, 可能在隔壁組工作的同事 走進你的辦公室 把你的椅子拿走 甚麼都沒說 拿了椅子,就走了, 完全沒解釋為甚麼他把你的椅子拿走, 全公司那麼多椅子 卻偏要拿你的, 也無視你很也許需要用這張椅子 來完成你今天需要的工作。 你絕對不會接受 所以你馬上行動, 你追著這個同事回到他的辦公桌, 質問他: "為甚麼偏要拿我的椅子?"
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)
現在,時間快轉到星期二早上, 你人已經到了公司, 行事曆傳來一個會議的邀請。 (笑聲) 是一個你可能認識的女同事寄來的, 會議的標題隱約的 提到你稍微聽過的一個案子, 但這個會議沒有議程, 沒有任何有關於為什麼你會被邀請的資訊, 但你還是接受邀請,並出席。 當這場沒有效率的會議結束之後 你回你的座位 並站在你座位旁 說道 "我真希望我能要回那兩小時 就像我想要回我的椅子一樣"。 (笑聲)
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)
每天,我們同意讓我們的同事 去偷走我們的東西, 儘管他們是非常好的人。 我在講的比辦公用品還寶貴, 我們講的是你的時間 事實上,我認為 我們正處於全球的疫情當中, 一個疫情名為MAS: 盲目接受症候群。 (笑聲) 盲目接受症候群的主要症狀為 馬上無條件的接受任何的會議邀請。 (笑聲) 他是一個反射動作, 只要叮— 點擊,乒— 就出現在你的月曆上, "該走了,我的會議已經遲到了"。(笑聲)
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.
會議非常重要,對吧? 合作通常是企業成功的關鍵。 一個好的會議能夠帶來正面且效率的回應 但是全球化 以及大型資訊技術之間, 我們的工作方式 在過去的幾年內產生巨大的變化, 然後我們變得很痛苦。 (笑聲) 我們很痛苦不是因為 別人不能開一個好會議, 是因為MAS,我們的盲目接受症候群, 這個病是我們自找的。
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)
事實上,我能夠證明 MAS是一個全球性的疫情, 讓我解釋。 幾年前我在YouTube上傳了一部影片, 我把會議上曾經歷最糟糕的情況都展現出來, 片長大約五分鐘 包括了一切有關令我們厭煩的會議, 有主持者完全不知道怎麼運作會議, 參會者完全不知道為什麼參加會議, 整件事演變成一連串的鬧劇, 最後大家都憤怒的離去。 其實有點好笑。 (笑聲) 讓我們簡單看一下 (影片) 我們今天的目標是為一個 非常重要的計畫達成一個共識, 作為一個團隊,我們需要決定如果—— 嗶 嗶—— 嗨,誰剛剛加入? 嗨,我是喬,我今天在家辦公。 (笑聲) 嗨,喬,謝謝你的加入,很好。 我剛剛提到說,我們這次會議有很多人參加, 所以我們直接跳過點名, 我就直接開始了。 我們今天的目標是為一個 非常重要的計畫達成一個共識, 作為一個團隊,我們需要決定如果—— 嗶 嗶—— (笑聲) 嗨,誰剛剛加入? 沒人? 我以為我聽到嗶聲 (笑聲)
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.
聽起來熟悉嗎? 對,這對我來說也很熟悉。 在我上傳影片的幾週後, 來自數十國家的50萬人 我講的是數十個國家 觀看這部影片。 之後的三年,每個月 仍然有幾千次的觀看次數, 到現在大概有一百萬次了。 事實上,有些國際大公司, 你肯定知道這些公司,但我不會公布名字, 他們徵求我的允許 把影片使用在他們的員工培訓上面, 來教導新員工如何不在公司裡開這樣的會議, 如果 幾百萬次的觀看紀錄和被大公司使用的事實 不足以證明會議已經是全球性議題, 在影片上傳之後 有成千上萬的評論 發布在網路上, 數千人寫下這樣的話 "我的天,這就是我的天" "這是我的每一天" "這是我的生活" 有一個人寫道 "這很有趣因為這是事實。 怪異,可悲,令人沮喪的事實, 它讓我笑到哭出來, 然後我一直哭,一直哭"。 (笑聲) 這個可憐人寫道 "這是我直到退休或死亡的每一天,嘆氣"。 這些都是真實的評論 而且真的令人沮喪。
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!"
這些網路上的評論有一個共同點, 那就是我們覺得無能為力 來避免參加這些會議, 並且忍受這些效率很差的會議, 苟延殘喘的活過另一天。 但事實上,我們並不是無能為力, 實際上盲目接受症候群的解藥就在我們手裡, 真的就在我們的指尖, 我稱之為 ¡No MAS!。 (笑聲) 如果我還記得我高中的西班牙課, 這句話的意思大概是 "已經夠了,停止吧"
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).
拒絕 MAS 的做法很簡單, 首先,下次你接到會議邀請的時候, 那種沒有任何相關資訊的會議邀請, 點擊 "不確定" 按鈕! 你是可以這麼做的,所以才有這個按鈕, 就在"接受"按鈕的旁邊, 或者是"或許"按鈕, 或什麼其他按鈕讓你不用立刻同意接受。 然後,去聯絡那個找你參加會議的人 告訴他你很高興能後支持他的工作。 然後問他會議的目的, 告訴他們你願意去學習 如何幫助他們達成目標。 如果我們經常這樣做, 以尊重的態度這樣做, 人們在邀請別人參與會議的時候 會多用點腦筋, 而你也可以做出更周全的決定來接受它。 人們或許真的開始列出議程,想像一下! 或者他們不會開一個12人的 電話會議來討論現況, 當他們可以簡單的使用電子郵件搞定。 人們的行為會因為你的改變而改變, 而他們也許還會把你的椅子還給你。 (笑聲) 拒絕 MAS! 謝謝 (鼓掌)