It was eye-opening for me too. The relevant chapter in the novel is great.
Up until then I'd been taught to keep meetings on agenda for a different reason: it keeps things moving along at a decent clip. Without an agenda, most discussions wander off into irrelevancies. With an agenda the Chair can say "that's not what we're discussing, we're discussing X which is in the agenda. Consider submitting it for the next meeting". Bam, you've just saved 20 minutes of chatter.
The first meeting I ever chaired lasted for about 4 or 5 hours. It was, in practice, a social get together. The minutes reflected that we decided basically nothing. By the end of my time in a chairman role I aimed for all meetings to conclude in 45 minutes and I was a maniac about sticking to the agenda. And you know what? It worked. It really worked.
Up until then I'd been taught to keep meetings on agenda for a different reason: it keeps things moving along at a decent clip. Without an agenda, most discussions wander off into irrelevancies. With an agenda the Chair can say "that's not what we're discussing, we're discussing X which is in the agenda. Consider submitting it for the next meeting". Bam, you've just saved 20 minutes of chatter.
The first meeting I ever chaired lasted for about 4 or 5 hours. It was, in practice, a social get together. The minutes reflected that we decided basically nothing. By the end of my time in a chairman role I aimed for all meetings to conclude in 45 minutes and I was a maniac about sticking to the agenda. And you know what? It worked. It really worked.