PIC No. 59:
• Title: How to Make a Few Billion Dollars
• Author: Brad Jacobs
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press (Jan. 15, 2024, 272 pages)
• Management Bucket #20 of 20: The Meetings Bucket
Welcome to Issue No. 59 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
Boring or Billion Dollar Meetings?
If the publisher of How to Make a Few Billion Dollars had asked me (and why would they?), I would have suggested several alternative book titles, snatched from the pages of this book:
• The Antidote to Boring Meetings: Productive Unpredictability (Sometimes Wildly So)
• Your Turn as the Meeting Facilitator: How to Shepherd a Group of Execs with Strong Personalities
• The Purpose of Meetings: Welcome Conflicting Opinions!
I could list a dozen more titles—because while Brad Jacobs’ book outlines his career path involving, yes, billions of dollars—I found his unique chapter, “How to Run Electric Meetings,” could be worth billions. Really!
Whoa! The author, who has founded seven companies, all billion-dollar or multibillion-dollar corporations, tells us about a “fantastic chief customer officer with an ebullient personality.” One problem: “…when it came to internal meetings, he couldn’t stop himself from engaging in side conversations.”
Jacobs writes, “It was disruptive and unproductive, and eventually it forced my hand. I banned him from all operating reviews for a full year. That’s 12 rounds of meetings where he was in the awkward position of having to send representatives to sit in and brief him after the fact. Once he’d completed his exile, he became a model meeting attendee.”
He adds, “It was a tough hammer to bring down on a member of the C-suite, but he accepted it with his characteristic charm and the rest of the team got the message: Follow the rules!”
Brad Jacobs asked meeting attenders to follow “four simple guidelines for respectful communication” in meetings, adding: “Set few rules, but cast them in stone. The tenor and structure of a well-run meeting are inseparable.” The four:
1) Turn off all devices.
2) Only one person talks at a time. No side conversations.
3) Give the speaker your full attention and keep an open, receptive mind.
4) Disagree, but disagree respectfully.
I especially appreciate the fourth rule. It reminded me of Patrick Lencioni's wisdom that the reason meetings are so boring is because there is no conflict. And this from The Motive: "What is the best place to observe a leader? That's right—a meeting."
“There are so many boring meetings,” Brad Jacobs moans. “So many rehearsed speeches and passive listeners, so little spontaneity. Even though the room is full of experienced, capable professionals with intelligent opinions, the chairs might as well be filled with human-shaped cardboard cutouts.” (We’ve been to those meetings, right?)
The goal: “Every time I lead a meeting, I want it to be an electrifying experience with high impact.” And so in this valuable 20-page chapter—jammed with effective meeting insights—you begin to see the foundation underneath this author’s successful ventures.
You’ll definitely get your money’s worth in “How to Run Electric Meetings.” Every monthly and quarterly operating review (MORs and QORs) included a feedback loop BEFORE every meeting—so every (every!) person arrives prepped on the meeting’s top-priority agenda topics (as agreed by the group). The result: “You also won’t chew up valuable meeting time flipping slides.” (He explains the approach in detail. Brilliant.)
And as the infomercials promise, “But wait…there’s more!”
• Chapter 4 is a must-read: “How to Build an Outrageously Talented Team.” (Jacobs depends on a friend, a 25-year investigator and polygraph examiner with the CIA to screen “nearly every senior employee I’ve hired since I met him.”)
• Worth gold: Pre-Interview Questions for Job Candidates. The appendix includes his list of 45 questions, including: “Who was your favorite boss and why?” and also your least favorite boss and why. Also, “What have been some of the biggest mistakes you’ve made, and what did you learn from them?” (Three cheers for mistake-making!)
• On culture (especially in mergers and acquisitions): “It’s hard, if not impossible, to make whole changes to a business culture.” He suggests you merge or acquire companies that already have compatible cultures. (Peter Drucker would agree.)
• Fascinating: a 12-page “History of Technology Timeline.”
• Stunning! The author invests three pages to thank 23 people (friends and mentors) who have helped shape his "personal philosophy by their example." (Who does that?!)
You’ll appreciate the author’s respect for board governance and board members. “Board meetings should be choreographed. If all you’re going to do is read a script, just send it as an email.”
Bingo! I often measure a book by the meat on page 25. On that page, Jacobs shares his favorite quadrant for assessing M&A deals based on size and risk:
• High Risk, Big Size: Bingo!
• High Risk, Small Size: don’t waste your time
• Low Risk, Big Size: they don’t exist!
• Low Risk, Small Size: can’t make much money
This reminded me of the page 25 quadrant in the book, Nonprofit Sustainability, with Stars, Hearts, Money Tree, and Stop Sign. (Read my review.)
You’ll also appreciate:
• The three ingredients for making group meetings electric, plus a list of “Morale-Boosting Exercises to End Meetings.” (See the appendix.)
• Eight pages of resources and book titles (I had only read five, including Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.) I do plan to read Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All.
Even if you don’t need a few billion dollars, don’t pass on this book (especially if you’re a nonprofit or church leader). I’d like to remind you that billions of dollars have great potential for doing good. Consider:
• The Salvation Army received a gift in excess of $1.5 billion from Joan B. Kroc, wife of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s Corporation. (Read more here in Chapter 1, “Big Blessings Abound When Governance Faithfulness Flourishes,” in More Lessons from the Nonprofit Boardroom.)
• Check out how many of “America’s Top 100 Charities” (2023, Forbes) have revenues of over $1 billion. Remember, money is a good thing, but “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of several other must-read books in the Meetings Bucket, plus other buckets/core competencies.
[ ] Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business, by Patrick Lencioni (read my review)
[ ] You're Not the Person I Hired! A CEO's Survival Guide to Hiring Top Talent, by Janet Boydell, Barry Deutsch, and Brad Remillard (read my review)
[ ] The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan (read my review)
[ ] Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability, by Jeanne Bell, Jan Masaoka and Steve Zimmerman (read my review)
[ ] More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! by Dan Busby and John Pearson (read my summary)
To order from Amazon, click on the title for How to Make a Few Billion Dollars, by Brad Jacobs. For more reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting. And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.
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