David Grady: How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings

Translator: Nana Ginnerup Reviewer: Anders Finn Jørgensen

Picture this:

Forestil dig dette:

It's Monday morning,

Det er mandag morgen,

you're at the office,

du er på kontoret,

you're settling in for the day at work,

du gør dig klar til dagens arbejde,

and this guy that you sort of recognize from down the hall,

og den her fyr, du på en måde genkender,

walks right into your cubicle

kommer ind på dit kontor

and he steals your chair.

og stjæler din stol.

Doesn't say a word —

Siger ikke et ord -

just rolls away with it.

ruller bare af sted med den.

Doesn't give you any information about why he took your chair

Giver ingen information, hvorfor han tog lige din stol

out of all the other chairs that are out there.

ud af alle de andre stole.

Doesn't acknowledge the fact that you might need your chair

Anerkender ikke, at du måske har brug for stolen

to get some work done today.

for at få lavet noget arbejde.

You wouldn't stand for it. You'd make a stink.

Du ville ikke finde dig i det!

You'd follow that guy back to his cubicle

Du ville følge efter ham til hans kontor,

and you'd say, "Why my chair?"

og du ville sige: "Hvorfor min stol?"

Okay, so now it's Tuesday morning and you're at the office,

Okay, så nu er det tirsdag morgen, og du sidder på kontoret,

and a meeting invitation pops up in your calendar.

og en mødeinvitation popper op i din kalender.

(Laughter)

And it's from this woman who you kind of know from down the hall,

Det er fra den kvinde, du på en måde kender fra længere nede ad gangen,

and the subject line references some project that you heard a little bit about.

og emnefeltet referer til et projekt, du har hørt en lille smule om.

But there's no agenda.

Men der er ingen dagsorden.

There's no information about why you were invited to the meeting.

Der er ingen information om hvorfor, du var inviteret til mødet.

And yet you accept the meeting invitation, and you go.

Og alligevel accepterer du invitationen og tager til mødet.

And when this highly unproductive session is over,

Og når denne højst uproduktive session er ovre,

you go back to your desk,

går du tilbage til dit skrivebord,

and you stand at your desk and you say,

og du står ved det, og du siger:

"Boy, I wish I had those two hours back,

"Jeg ville ønske, jeg kunne få de to timer tilbage,

like I wish I had my chair back."

ligesom jeg ville ønske, jeg fik min stol tilbage."

(Laughter)

Every day, we allow our coworkers,

Hver dag tillader vi vores kolleger,

who are otherwise very, very nice people,

som ellers er rigtig venlige personer,

to steal from us.

at stjæle fra os.

And I'm talking about something far more valuable than office furniture.

Jeg snakker om noget langt vigtigere end kontormøbler.

I'm talking about time. Your time.

Jeg snakker om tid. Din tid.

In fact, I believe that

Rent faktisk, tror jeg på,

we are in the middle of a global epidemic

at vi er midt i en global epidemi

of a terrible new illness known as MAS:

af en frygtelig sygdom kendt som "MAS":

Mindless Accept Syndrome.

Mindless Accept Syndrome (Hjernedødt Accept Syndrom)

(Laughter)

The primary symptom of Mindless Accept Syndrome

Det primære symptom af Mindless Accept Syndrome

is just accepting a meeting invitation the minute it pops up in your calendar.

er bare at acceptere en mødeinvitation øjeblikket det popper op i din kalender.

(Laughter)

It's an involuntary reflex — ding, click, bing — it's in your calendar,

Den er en ufrivillig refleks - ding, klik - det er i din kalender.

"Gotta go, I'm already late for a meeting." (Laughter)

"Må gå, er allerede sent for et møde."

Meetings are important, right?

Møder er vigtige, ikke sandt?

And collaboration is key to the success of any enterprise.

Og samarbejde er nøglen til succes i ethvert foretagende.

And a well-run meeting can yield really positive, actionable results.

Og et veldrevet møde kan give positive, handlingsrettede resultater.

But between globalization

Men mellem globalisering

and pervasive information technology,

og vidtspredt IT,

the way that we work

har måden, vi arbejder på,

has really changed dramatically over the last few years.

ændret sig drastisk over de sidste par år.

And we're miserable. (Laughter)

Og vi har det elendigt.

And we're miserable not because the other guy can't run a good meeting,

Vi har det ikke elendigt, fordi den anden fyr ikke kan holde et godt møde.

it's because of MAS, our Mindless Accept Syndrome,

Det er på grund af MAS, vores Mindless Accept Syndrome,

which is a self-inflicted wound.

som er et selvforskyldt sår.

Actually, I have evidence to prove that MAS is a global epidemic.

Rent faktisk har jeg bevis til at bevise, at MAS er en global epidemi.

Let me tell you why.

Lad mig fortælle jer hvorfor.

A couple of years ago, I put a video on Youtube, and in the video,

For et par år siden lagde jeg en video op på YouTube, og i den video fremførte jeg

I acted out every terrible conference call you've ever been on.

ethvert forfærdeligt konference- opkald, du nogensinde har deltaget i.

It goes on for about five minutes,

Det fortsætter ca. 5 min.,

and it has all the things that we hate about really bad meetings.

og det indeholder alle de ting, vi hader ved virkelig dårlige møder.

There's the moderator who has no idea how to run the meeting.

Der er ordstyreren, der ikke aner, hvordan man skal styre et møde.

There are the participants who have no idea why they're there.

Der er deltagerne, der ikke aner, hvorfor de er der.

The whole thing kind of collapses into this collaborative train wreck.

Det hele kollapser,

And everybody leaves very angry.

Og alle forlader stedet arrigt.

It's kind of funny.

Det er egentligt lidt morsomt.

(Laughter)

Let's take a quick look.

Lad os tage et hurtigt kig.

(Video) Our goal today is to come to an agreement on a very important proposal.

(Video) Vores mål i dag er at komme til enighed om et meget vigtigt forslag.

As a group, we need to decide if —

Som en gruppe skal vi beslutte om —

bloop bloop —

bloop bloop —

Hi, who just joined?

Hej, hvem sluttede sig lige til?

Hi, it's Joe. I'm working from home today.

Hej, det er Joe. Jeg arbejder hjemmefra i dag.

(Laughter)

Hi, Joe. Thanks for joining us today, great.

Hej Joe. Tak for at være med i dag. Godt,

I was just saying, we have a lot of people on the call we'd like to get through,

jeg var ved at sige, at vi har mange med på opkaldet,

so let's skip the roll call

så lad os skippe navnerunden

and I'm gonna dive right in.

og gå igang.

Our goal today is to come to an agreement on a very important proposal.

Vores mål i dag er at komme til enighed om et meget vigtigt forslag.

As a group, we need to decide if —

Som gruppe skal vi beslutte om —

bloop bloop —

bloop bloop —

(Laughter)

Hi, who just joined?

Hej, hvem sluttede sig lige til?

No? I thought I heard a beep. (Laughter)

Nej? Jeg syntes, jeg hørte et bip.

Sound familiar?

Lyder bekendt?

Yeah, it sounds familiar to me, too.

Ja, det lyder også bekendt for mig.

A couple of weeks after I put that online,

Et par uger efter, jeg lagde det online,

500,000 people in dozens of countries,

var der 500.000 folk fra snesevis af lande,

I mean dozens of countries,

jeg mener snesevis af lande,

watched this video.

der så denne her video.

And three years later, it's still getting thousands of views every month.

Og tre år efter får den stadig tusindvis af visninger hver måned.

It's close to about a million right now.

Den er tæt på omkring en million lige nu.

And in fact, some of the biggest companies in the world,

Nogle af de største firmaer i verden,

companies that you've heard of but I won't name,

firmaer man kender, men jeg ikke vil nævne,

have asked for my permission to use this video in their new-hire training

har spurgt om tilladelse til at bruge videoen til deres optræning

to teach their new employees how not to run a meeting at their company.

for at lære deres nye ansatte, hvordan man ikke skal holde et møde i deres firma.

And if the numbers —

Og hvis tal —

there are a million views and it's being used by all these companies —

en million visninger, og alle firmaerne —

aren't enough proof that we have a global problem with meetings,

ikke er nok bevis på at vi har et globalt problem med møder,

there are the many, many thousands

så er der mange, mange tusinde

of comments posted online

kommentarer opslået online

after the video went up.

efter videoen kom op.

Thousands of people wrote things like,

Tusinder af folk skrev ting som:

"OMG, that was my day today!"

"OMG, det var min dag i dag!"

"That was my day every day!"

"Det var min dag, hver dag!"

"This is my life."

"Det her er mit liv."

One guy wrote,

En skrev:

"It's funny because it's true.

"Det er sjovt, fordi det er sandt. Uhyggeligt og deprimerende sandt.

Eerily, sadly, depressingly true.

It made me laugh until I cried.

Det fik mig til at grine til jeg græd.

And cried. And I cried some more."

Og jeg græd. Og jeg græd noget mere."

(Laughter)

This poor guy said,

Denne her stakkel sagde:

"My daily life until retirement or death, sigh."

"Mit daglige liv indtil pension eller døden, suk."

These are real quotes

Disse er virkelige citater, og det er virkeligt trist.

and it's real sad.

A common theme running through all of these comments online

Et fælles tema for alle disse kommentarer online

is this fundamental belief that we are powerless

er den fundamentale tro på, at vi er magtesløse

to do anything other than go to meetings

overfor at gøre andet end at gå til møder

and suffer through these poorly run meetings

og lide gennem disse dårligt organiserede møder

and live to meet another day.

og leve for at møde den næste dag.

But the truth is, we're not powerless at all.

Men sandheden er, at vi slet ikke er magtesløse.

In fact, the cure for MAS is right here in our hands.

Faktisk er kuren for MAS lige her i vores egne hænder.

It's right at our fingertips, literally.

Den er lige ved vores fingerspidser.

It's something that I call ¡No MAS!

Det er noget, jeg kalder: "¡No MAS!"

(Laughter)

Which, if I remember my high school Spanish,

Som, hvis jeg kan huske mit gymnasiespansk,

means something like, "Enough already, make it stop!"

betyder noget a la: "Så er det nok, få det til at stoppe!"

Here's how No MAS works. It's very simple.

Her er hvordan No MAS fungerer. Det er meget simpelt.

First of all, the next time you get a meeting invitation

Først og fremmest: Næste gang du modtager en mødeinvitation,

that doesn't have a lot of information in it at all,

der ikke indeholder meget information overhovedet,

click the tentative button!

klik på "usikker"-knappen!

It's okay, you're allowed, that's why it's there.

Det er okay; du må godt. Det er derfor, den er der.

It's right next to the accept button.

Lige ved siden af "accepter".

Or the maybe button, or whatever button is there for you not to accept immediately.

Eller "måske"-knappen, eller hvad end der er der, så du ikke accepterer nu.

Then, get in touch with the person who asked you to the meeting.

Få fat i personen, der inviterede dig til mødet

Tell them you're very excited to support their work,

Sig, at du er begejstret for at støtte op om arbejdet,

ask them what the goal of the meeting is,

spørg hvad målet med mødet er,

and tell them you're interested in learning how you can help them achieve their goal.

og sig, at du er interesseret i at lære, hvordan du kan hjælpe dem nå det mål.

And if we do this often enough,

Og hvis vi gør det ofte nok,

and we do it respectfully,

og vi gør det respektfuldt,

people might start to be a little bit more thoughtful

vil folk måske begynde at tænke lidt mere

about the way they put together meeting invitations.

over den måde de sammen- sætter mødeinvitationerne.

And you can make more thoughtful decisions about accepting it.

Og du kan træffe bedre beslutninger om at acceptere dem.

People might actually start sending out agendas. Imagine!

Folk vil måske begynde at tilsende dagsordener. Tænk engang!

Or they might not have a conference call with 12 people to talk about a status

Eller de vil måske droppe konference- opkaldene med 12 personer,

when they could just do a quick email and get it done with.

når det kunne have været gjort med en hurtig email i stedet.

People just might start to change their behavior because you changed yours.

Folk ville måske begynde at ændre deres adfærd, fordi du ændrede din.

And they just might bring your chair back, too. (Laughter)

Og de vil måske også give dig din stol tilbage.

No MAS!

No MAS!

Thank you.

Tak.

(Applause).