Foreword
Ken Blanchard

Forty-three percent.

That’s the amount of time professionals say they waste during meetings. It’s a stunning number when you consider that meetings consume a huge chunk of every business day.

Making the most of meeting time may be the greatest opportunity we have to get more done, be happier in our jobs, and free up more time. And given the challenges our world faces right now, meetings that identify and solve real problems would go a long way toward making things better. Yet ever since people began gathering together to get work done, the world has been plagued by meetings without clear agendas, meetings that stray off course, meetings with incomplete action items, and meetings without accountability and follow-through.

The Hamster Revolution for Meetings excites me because the authors not only provide sound advice on how to manage traditional, face-to-face meetings, they also show how much easier meetings can be with the help of technology: e-calendars, virtual meeting tools, PDAs, and more. Plus, it’s a fun story that gets to the point. You can read it cover-to-cover during a 90-minute plane ride.

If you’re like the average professional, you spend more than a quarter of your day in meetings. Assuming you want to be a great leader or team player, don’t you think it’s a good idea to have a strategy for making the most of every meeting you attend? There’s no question that this book will save you time—but it also just might take you, your company, and our world to a higher level.

—Ken Blanchard,
coauthor of The One Minute Manager®
and Leading at a Higher Level