The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is one my favourite books. Andrew Rixon’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to Better Meetings is a delightful riff on it.
I especially loved his point about the number 42. In the book the machine deep thought rumbles away for 7.5 million years to reveal that this is the answer to the ultimate question of life the universe and everything. Which is rather useless, as no-one actually knows what the ultimate question is. Andrew continues:
How often have you been in a meeting where people are focussing on jumping to answers, regardless of what the problem or question actually is?…Thinking there’s one right answer and it’s 42 is a whole other problem for meetings. This manifests itself by way of pre-determined outcomes and an inability to accept emergent outcomes.
The principles of DON’T PANIC and having a towel are worth reading too.
