Richard and Emily Axelrod have invested thirty years answering this question, and they have a field-tested answer. Using the same work design principles that transformed the mind-numbing assembly line into the dynamic factory floor, and that make video games so engaging, their new book offers a flexible, repeatable process that has already been used to run thousands of productive meetings in all kinds of organizations.

It takes more than an agenda and a note-taker. The Axelrods show how to design every aspect of a meeting - from the way you greet people at the beginning to how you sum up at the end - so that the experience will be energizing rather than enervating, and relevant and helpful to every participant. Their detailed, six-stage approach, which they dub the Meeting Canoe (since, like a canoe, it adapts to changing conditions and is a collective effort) is a seismic shift in the way we view, use, and participate in meetings. The many current users of this system will never go back. Neither will you.