Will There Be Donuts? - David Pearl

Why read this book?

Have you ever been in a meeting where you were bored, disinterested, unclear on what was being achieved, or confused as to why you were there at all? Are there some meetings where the only thing you hope for is doughnuts? Everybody has had these experiences at work, and this book is for you.

A book about meetings doesn’t sound particularly interesting, but this one combines a friendly conversational style of writing, with some common sense advice and a refreshing view of how we communicate that can really help you to both lead and attend better meetings.

David covers the differences between ‘nearly meeting’ and ‘really meeting’ as well as working through many different types of meetings and how to get the best from each.

The intro ends with “Remember, this isn’t a book about boring meetings and whether you want to have them. It’s a book about boring lives and whether you want to live one.”

The author

David Pearl has experience of opera, theatre, film and broadcasting - now bringing all of this diverse experience to the corporate world to inspire creativity and fun.

Here’s a quick video of David chatting about meetings:

What has this book encouraged me to do differently?

Easy. To do what everybody has always wanted to do with meetings, but nobody ever realised it was OK to do.

There are far too many traditions, expectations and ‘etiquette’ things around meetings. Like when you’re invited to a meeting, you go to it. If there is a recurring weekly meeting, it happens every week. And meetings are always scheduled to last 30/60/90/120 minutes.

This book encourages you to reconsider all of the traditions. If you’re invited to a meeting, only go if it’s relevant for you to be there. If there is a recurring meeting, only make it happen when it actually needs to happen - don’t meet for the sake of meeting. And if a meeting finishes early… end it. Stop. Give people their time back.

Sometimes these things need a little bravery - breaking the traditions is the first step, then you need to take on the role of meeting hijacker to take the remaining meetings from OK to amazing…

The book will help you to address the things people don’t speak about, to enlist new recruits to your team of meeting hijackers, and generally start ‘really’ meeting people and making better use of your time.