Gamestorming 2.0

Chapter 4. Designing Workshops and Meetings

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, ordinary life has rules. Secret signals, implicit norms, and explicit codes of conduct form what cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand calls a primal template of culture—an elegant way of describing how we do things around here.

Meetings also have cultural templates. They’re revealed in our default versions of gathering at work, which almost no one seems to delight in. Meetings as we know them tend to be too tight or too loose, too vague or too prescribed, too joyless or too chaotic—and definitely far too frequent. Few organizations have solved the meeting puzzle in terms of people, process, path, and product, so meetings end up being almost tragicomic, unsatisfying for most attendees most of the time. This is hardly a revelation. Meetings are the butt of countless jokes about modern work. At best, they’re a groan-worthy, minor inconvenience. At worst, they’re a sign of partial attention, scattered focus, oblivion, and disrespect.

Disrupting the Default Meeting Template

When entrepreneur David Hieatt was designing the culture of Hiut Denim inspired by Cal Newport’s research on deep work,¹ he drafted a set of team guiding principles. One standout on the list: protect employees from dumb meetings. As the CEO of 37 Signals pointed out, “Five people in a room for an hour isn’t a one-hour meeting. It’s a five-hour meeting.” Designing this time well matters, and that’s why this book exists: to positively ...