Making YOUR Meetings Matter
Permit me a bit of shameless self-promotion. My new book, Making Meetings Matter: How Smart Leaders Orchestrate Powerful Conversations in the Digital Age, just became available on Amazon.com, and I am in a giddy celebratory mode.
In fact, I just got my very first copy of the paperback edition (I ordered it from Amazon on Friday). Yes, I’ve read it all before, but there is something very visceral about seeing the actual book. Here’s a picture my wife took of me admiring it. There is nothing like finally holding your “baby” in your own hands!
I am particularly proud of the testimonials I’ve already received from a number of very smart people. Here are just a few:
Joe Hagan, Chief Executive Officer, National Equity Fund:
Like most executives I spend most of my waking hours in meetings. With digital technology transforming the way we work, we desperately need to rethink how to make those meetings matter. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to lead more effective conversations.
Mike Wagner, Chief Executive Officer, Kimball Office :
The pace of change in the workplace is blistering. At the heart of the transformation is a massive shift in the way people interact while working. The insights shared in this book are critical for understanding these changes. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in better understanding the workplace of the future.
Ruth Ross. Engagement Evangelist, Speaker and Author of Coming Alive: The Journey To Reengage Your Life And Career:
Jim Ware has done the impossible; he actually makes meetings relevant and, dare I say it, even fun again. Don’t waste another minute on ineffective meetings now that you’ve learned the secret to changing the conversation.
Rod Collins, author of Wiki Management and Leadership in a Wiki World:
Jim Ware’s new book is the definitive guide for managers who want to learn how to transform meetings from time-wasters into powerful resources for creating extraordinary engagement and high performance. Read this book and discover how you can leverage the collective wisdom of your colleagues to succeed in today’s rapidly changing and complex world.
Last week I had an opportunity to present my core ideas about making meetings matter the Wine Country Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI). The group responded very positively; the participants added several new stories of meetings gone bad to my repertoire.
And it is important for you to know that having the book in print is only the first step. I’m setting up the makingmeetingsmatter website to be a forum for ongoing conversation about meetings – what makes them good, bad, or ugly, and what we can all do collectively to make meetings both functional and fun again.
Please visit the site now and sign up for future news and notes about the book and related resources. The website is currently a simple one-pager, but it will soon become a full-fledged informational and conversational forum with a blog as well as other meeting leadership resources, most of which will be freebies because I care so much about improving the quality everyone’s meeting experience.
If you haven’t noticed already I am more than passionate about making meetings matter. We waste way too much time in meetings that don’t matter — meetings that get in the way of organizational and individual productivity. This book is just my latest salvo in a life-long crusade to change that tragic reality.
I hope you will want to join that crusade and work with me to wipe out bad meetings forever.
Note: The book is now available for purchase on Amazon.com, at http://amzn.to/1SKV1Rp. Please follow this link (www.makingmeetingsmatter.com) to visit the book’s website, where you can sign up for free tips and techniques for making meetings matter, download excerpts from the book, connect with other readers, and contribute to my ongoing research about what makes for good meetings. And of course you can also click through from there to order a paperback copy from Amazon (the Kindle version will be up in another week or so).
Contact me today for a free 30-minute strategic conversation about how you can make all your meetings and other corporate conversations both productive and popular. Please download this brief overview of my new service offering for making meetings matter to explore what’s possible.