 Let's take a breath or two and just thank God that we arrived here safely, you know, pray that he'll keep us safe for at least for the next hour and hour and 15 minutes. The name of the Father and of the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we know that you speak to us in a direct and personal way in a variety of ways and one of those ways is sometimes through another person. Lord, help us always to keep in mind that every meeting we attend is an opportunity to hear your voice speaking to us in a direct and personal way through one or one or more of our fellow meeting participants. Bless our time together. May it bear good fruit in our efforts to serve your holy people and we ask these blessings through Christ our Lord by the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Name the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right, let me see your hand if you were in my session yesterday afternoon. So we got about a little half. Some of you might hear some little routine things that I do, you know, on the front end. So just, you know, you know, bear with me. But I definitely, I want to commend all of you, of course, just for being here at this conference, for participating in whatever workshops are kind of attracting you. And again, we always do hope that these are, that all of them in their own way are going to help us be better servants of God's people. So yeah, I just admire you for being here. If I had a hat, I would tip it to you and I left my good to pay at home. So I just have to accept me saying I admire you, you know, for the effort that you're putting into your own formation. So yes, my name is Ken O'Gorick. I serve on Archbishop Charles Thompson's leadership team in Indianapolis, Indiana. I always say that because people sometimes hear Minneapolis when I say Indianapolis, they'll say, wow, you guys get a lot of snow. And I'll be like, well, I mean, not really, but, you know, I guess. So I help coordinate the work of about a dozen different offices and ministries. Won't read you the laundry list, but it all falls under the umbrella one way or another of evangelization and catechesis. So that's about all I have to tell you about myself. I mean, we'll get to know each other a little bit in the next hour or so, which will be a good thing for me, maybe not so good for you, but that's okay. It's never too early to start doing, I guess, Advent penance. All right. So yeah, depending on how things go a little bit later in our session, I might talk a little bit about just really the importance of not working in isolation. So even knowing it's like, wow, there's someone here from the diocese right next to me, you know? Who knows? Maybe we can connect and have coffee every now and then and just kind of compare notes. So again, maybe more about that later. But speaking of meeting for coffee, just a little preview of our time together here, the topic is obviously meetings, right? And I'm hoping we can do just a few things. First of all, I hope to help us understand at a deeper level why so many people seem to detest meetings so much. You know, it's the rare person I meet, you know, hey, what are you up to today? Man, I get to go to two meetings. Can you believe it? So there seems to be this aversion at times in people to meetings in general. But there's reasons for it. And we're going to delve into that a little bit. And then I'm going to propose some ideas that aren't my own. I'll mention more about this author and speaker in a moment. But a proposal for sort of rethinking meetings, how to approach meetings differently. And then you will definitely have some opportunities to share with each other. Because again, as I said yesterday, there's a lot of wisdom and experience in this room. You know, we've all had different experiences of various sorts with meetings and maybe some things to share with each other that could be helpful. So there will be, I'll talk a fair amount on the front end, but there definitely will be some interaction. And again, as I said yesterday, I'm an old high school teacher. So I'm always aware of when the dismissal bell is going to ring. So I'm very conscious of the time. In fact, some of you have a specific lunch meeting today, I think, with Archbishop Tabarth. So if I end at five till 12 instead of 12, will anyone ask for their money back? Okay, so, you know, talk is cheap though, right? You'll believe it when you see it. But no, I'll be on top of that. So just a heads up, even looking at the handout, you're going to hear some things that are maybe a little bit challenging today. But I just want to encourage you to keep an open mind within reason, you know, and maybe think in terms of what I'm going to propose to you. If it isn't something you feel you can adapt or adopt, you know, 100%, maybe there are some baby steps you can take in some aspects of the meetings that you participate in that could be helpful, okay? So it's not kind of like an all or nothing, all or nothing approach. So yes, let me see your hand if you're at least a little bit familiar with the name Pat Lencioni, Patrick Lencioni. Okay, so again, not everything we do in the DAS and officials track is based on Pat's work, but pieces of it show up in various points and with good reason. Have any of you read his book, Death by Meeting? Some of you have. Okay, so this is going to be a review for a lot of you, but sometimes it's helpful to hear different people explain something. I always kind of benefit from that just to be reminded and to think about it again and maybe hear about the way they explain it. But a lot of you aren't familiar with his book, Death by Meeting or the concepts behind it. So for a lot of you, this will be brand new stuff. And again, challenging perhaps, but I think you'll find at least some benefit in a lot of this content. So I want to start with an example. I want you to envision a slightly younger kinogoric, maybe with slightly thicker hair and a slightly thinner waist. It's funny how that kind of goes inverse as we get older. But so I'm at my house. I'm with my lovely bride of 30 years. We've had 30 years of happy marriage, one for Melissa and 29 for me. So it's been fantastic. And the bathroom that sort of is connected to our bedroom, it's got one of those double sinks. Fancy, right? Double sinks. So picture a slightly younger kin and my wife, she's ageless and timeless in her beauty. So we're kind of getting ready for our day, right? It's a busy day, a busy morning. We kind of brush our teeth. And one of us at some point says, hey, what should we have for dinner tonight? It's kind of raises that question, natural question. And you know how couples, not even just couples, just people in general, but I find that couples especially, you'll start like three different conversations or like you'll ask a question and you won't necessarily resolve it, but it'll cost someone to think of something else so you move on to something else. So the question is raised, what should we have for dinner tonight? And then a moment or two later, one or the other of us says, oh, who's picking up what kid wear today? Who has to be wear at what time? So we go on brushing our teeth and I was using hair product back then, so I'm doing that. I still have a bang, by the way. It's awesome. I take very good care of this. Anyway, so then a moment later, one or the other of us says, oh, where would be a good place to do a family vacation this year? Where should we go on vacation this year? So again, we're just going on with our routine. We're just bringing up these things, not really resolving them in any real way. And then the pièce de résistance, and again, we're younger, okay? So one of us says, what if we should have another baby? All right? So think about that brief period of time, and it's a limited amount of time because we have to start our day. Four different questions or topics or agenda items, if you will, radically different from each other, though, right? What should we have for dinner tonight? That should be a relatively quick and easy question to answer, okay? And we'll talk a little bit later about how some people can take 45 minutes to figure out what they're going to have for dinner that night. But again, pretty simple straightforward. Who needs to pick up what kid where? That's a little bit more complicated, right? That requires some logistics and specific tasks to be accomplished and duties and people holding up their end of the bargain. So a little bit more complicated, a little more complex. Family vacation, okay? That sounds like something where you're going to want to put a couple or three options on the table. You know, maybe we could go here, maybe we could go there. Here's what would be cool about going here. I looked into some of the prices, hotel prices, a little research, you know, discussion, pros and cons, all right? And then, you know, should we have another baby? Kind of a big question, or, you know, and again, I could phrase that differently, but, you know, is God, you know, we're always open to new life, but, you know, is that something we should try in a focused way to collaborate with God about? Huge question, right? That probably involves a little bit of time, some prayerful discernment, right? So a lot of meetings that all of us have attended over the years, if you think about the agendas of those meetings, there are oftentimes this sort of hodgepodge of agenda items that range from short, sweet, and simple, or at least in theory, to, like, life-changing, you know, paradigm shift questions for an organization or an institution. And sometimes they're not in any particular order, and there's not time allotted to any of them. So it ends up being just this blend of frustrating things, you know, because people feel, especially if the person facilitating the meeting doesn't feel like they have permission to move things along on certain types of topics. You can end up spending 45 minutes talking about where to get the donuts for the first Holy Communion reception, you know, and then you got five minutes left at the very end to talk about, you know, which architect should we choose for the possible parish addition that we're thinking about. And people are very frustrated, right, because that's an item that really, it needs more time, and it needs more information, okay? I'm going to presume that all of you more or less, you like people pretty much, generally speaking. So it isn't interacting with people that you dislike. That's what we're doing immediately. You know, some people more than others. I got you, Father. But so we tend not to dislike meetings because we don't like people, right? It's just this, it's almost like the deck is stacked against us sometimes because of the way a lot of beings operate, okay? Let me give you one other example. In case picturing me in the morning getting ready is just not a visual you want to be left with, you know? I'll give you one more example. I don't cook every day, but when I do, I'm that person who I consider recipes to suggestions, you know, and then sometimes what I'll do is I'll just sort of do a little recon and look at what we kind of need to get rid of, you know? It's like, oh, there's leftover pot roast. It probably has a couple of three days left. I should make something out of this, you know? Oh, like maybe a stew, okay? So we have some potatoes. They're sweet potatoes, but whatever. And we have some carrots, but they're candied. They're like glaze. So they have like honey and stuff on them. But that'll be all right. I'm looking around. Oh, man, those grapefruits. We've had those since Christmas. So if I break those up and put them in this stew, that'll be pretty good. And oh, the sugar bowl is almost empty. So why don't I just empty that out and, you know, get rid of that. And so if you put things together that don't belong together and this is a kind of sophisticated theological term, I think it comes from a Latin word, but you end up with a really yucky, you know, like a yucky stew. And again, that's what a lot of meetings are. They're just like a yucky stew. The things in themselves aren't bad. You know, we like sweet potatoes. We like pot roast. But they just, again, they just don't go together. And so you end up not even getting the benefit or the enjoyment out of the individual things, which in and of themselves are probably important things to talk about. But that's one of the reasons. I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds of reasons why people have a varying degree of feelings toward meetings. But if you really, if you think about it, and again, this kind of resonated with my experience when I read Patrick's work. It's like, yeah, you know what, I do find myself feeling that way sometimes at meetings. So Patrick, who, again, I don't want to tell you his live story, but just a guy who's observed the way that a lot of leadership teams operate, a lot of teams operate. So he's observed a lot of meetings and so he's kind of come up with what he thinks for various reasons is a better way of approaching the whole topic of meetings. Okay? So his basic point is that different types of agenda items at times should really have their own meeting. Let's not mix all these types of agenda items together because it's going to be frustrating to people. So let's always be aware of which of those four main types. And again, it's on your handout. I don't really want to use sort of the abstract terms, administrative, tactical, strategic and developmental. But let's be aware of what type of agenda item it is so that we can treat it properly and give it a meeting that's going to give it a chance to be discussed and decided in a way that's not agonizing for people. And this is the mind-blower. Again, I told you this is going to be challenging. Patrick says that you should have more meetings. The solution to disliking meetings is to have more meetings. And that's where people start to sort of lose it. But what's very important here is then you'll see as we go through this, the types of meetings are going to vary dramatically in length and frequency. And if you do the math, and again, I don't know how many hours you tend to work in a typical week. I mean, we could go around the horn and I don't know if it would be a bell shaped curve. But just crunching a few numbers, if you add up everything he's talking about, you end up spending about 15% of a typical work week in meetings. But they're the types of meetings where you're actually getting work done during the meeting. And you're lessening, you know, one of the results of a bad meeting is you end up with this to-do list because things didn't get discussed as well as they should or someone didn't have the information that they should have had that would have made it helpful. So you leave the meeting with more work to do, right? But again, this vision that he has of maybe tweaking the way we do meetings, there's a lot less of that. So that leaves you 85% of your time in a typical week actually to do additional work and not be sitting in meetings, okay? So again, I don't know what percentage of your time you sit in meetings. It might be more than 15. It might be less than 15. It might be more than 15. But there's probably work that flows out of that meeting because it's not a well-run meeting. So one way or another, the meeting ends up eating up a lot of your time, okay? And that can be very frustrating. And one other thing before we dive into some more specifics here, we're kind of talking about meetings in general, but a lot of us here, we either lead at least a small staff or team of people or we're part of a small staff or a team of people that meets regularly. So that's the setting, like the setting that we're kind of addressing here most directly, that sort of leadership team of a group and effort and organization. But I don't want you to think that these principles can't be applied to all sorts of different types of situations and all sorts of different types of meetings, okay? Because not all of us here have the exact same job description or role in our diocese parish or school or agency or apostolate, okay? So again, you can, some of this you can adapt to whatever your setting is, okay? All right, you ready to dive in? Let's dive in, okay? Number one, Pat says that you should have a meeting every day, a specific type of meeting every day, okay? And he calls that, he calls that, well, it goes by a variety of terms. I sort of call it the daily check-in. I guess that's what it says on the handout as well. But here's the thing. If it takes more than 10 minutes, you're not doing it right. It is a quick, it's a quick way for a team of people just to touch base with each other briefly. It should probably happen relatively early in the day. And he even gets so specific as to say, you shouldn't sit down. You shouldn't, of course, unless you have to, of course, for medical reasons, but don't even sit down for this because it's not that kind of meeting, okay? So what do we do? The Catholic setting, of course, we pray. So the first thing the team does is they pray with each other and they pray for each other, okay? Then each person goes around the horn very quickly and names the top three things they need to get done that day, okay? Not a lot of explanation, not a lot of discussion. Just, hey, here's the biggest three items on my plate today, which sounds to me like they need to be a little prepared, that they need to have actually thought of that, you know, before they come to the meeting, all right? And what that often leads to is, if I know that Emily this afternoon is gonna be meeting with Monsignor Stump, you know? And guess what? There's this thing that I've been meeting to get to Monsignor Stump, you know? So without spending a lot of time on it, and even if it's immediately after the meeting, as we're walking back to our office, it's like, Emily, can you give this to Monsignor Stump? You know, you're gonna see him this afternoon. So when a team just sort of goes through that quick sort of top three items of the day, there's some real-time collaboration and time-saving opportunities that come up. The only other thing I'll say is, you know, not every team member can be present physically or otherwise every day or every morning at a certain time. So if a person can't be there, don't cancel the meeting. It's not an all-or-nothing thing, okay? It's whatever members of that team are able to do that daily check-in, do that. So again, think about it. And again, if it lasts more than 10 minutes, sometimes it can be as quick as five minutes, okay? And nobody's offended because you know that going in. But think about that for a minute. How powerful that is. A Catholic leadership team, actually they're praying for each other and with each other, naming specific tasks. So that's even more specific things to pray about. You know, specific prayer intentions. The real-time collaboration that can emerge from just that quick conversation. And presumably you would close with a brief prayer as well. No more than 10 minutes. So that's an ingredient in the meeting mix that Patrick recommends, okay? Then he talks about a brief, not as brief as 10 minutes, but a relatively brief weekly meeting, okay? You can see that on your agenda. And this meeting is for a very specific purpose. You should consciously avoid agenda items. Well, actually we'll talk about the agenda more in a minute. But this is not the meeting where you get into the where should we go on vacation types of issues. Things that require research, comparing, contrasting, discussing, debating. This meeting, it presumes that on your team or your staff, along with all the other smaller individual things that each person is working on in their own area, every organization, I think I can say this at pretty much of a 100% level, there's always a priority. At any given time, there's something that the leadership team really needs to focus on and pull together and get done and move along. A big project of some sort that it doesn't, it involves the whole team. So I'm not going to go into that in great detail right now, but so Patrick is presuming that your staff, your team, there's probably something that's a pretty big thing. It's looming on the horizon and it's a team effort, a big event of some sort, something. I could, yeah, I have some examples here. Maybe I should give them to you. Yeah, so we've tried different things for Catechus formation over the years, but for a while we were having a day-long Saturday, Saturday day for Catechus, right? A live in-person thing. So for a couple of three months of the year at least, that was a big thing. And we all sort of had a role to play in it and we all had responsibility for it, okay? So that's an example. So what do you do at that meeting? Well, you pray, right? Then you do sort of an alternate version of that daily check-in. You just again quickly go around the horn and talk about your biggest three priorities for that week just quickly, okay? And here's a mind-blower, here's another mind-blower. You don't come into the meeting with an agenda. You actually make the agenda up in real-time based on the way this meeting is run. That's really hard for some folks. I've worked with at least one person over the years. Every time I would invite this person to a meeting, what was their first question? Well, what's the agenda? Before I decided whether or not I want to come to a meeting, I need to know what the agenda is, okay? And for a lot, for different types of meetings, that makes a lot of sense. But this relatively quick, and we're talking, it could be as short as 45 minutes, this weekly meeting. This is a, again, Patrick calls it tactical. The main point of this meeting is to check on the progress of that big thing that you've all agreed is important and that you're all working on together and that you all have a role to play in it. You've got duties, you've got responsibilities, okay? So by doing, by praying and just doing that round robin, and then if things come up during the round robin, that could be discussed briefly. Someone's kind of writing that down. So that kind of becomes kind of a sort of a real-time agenda. But the main agenda is to review the progress, to check on the progress of that big thing, okay? Shane, you were supposed to, last week you were supposed to order whatever, the t-shirts, you know? Okay, that's right. Wasn't able to get it done, all right? Well, hold that thought, you know? So you sort of, you literally do that, you go around the horn, and what that does is either it gives you the certainty of knowing, hey, it's done, we're good to go, or I wasn't able to do it. And then it becomes a quick question of, is there something along, can we help? What's going on? And it could be as something as simple as no, I'm definitely going to do it this afternoon, I just haven't been able to do it yet, or no, you know, that company went out of business, who do you guys recommend that we go with, okay? So we're helping each other, we're helping each other accomplish those tasks that need to be accomplished in order for that big thing to move along, okay? We support each other. And then at the end of the meeting, and again, it can be as short as 45 minutes, we've got a list of action items, you know? By the time we get together next week, all right, Shane, you're definitely, you're going to call that other company, right? And you're going to get the T-shirts ordered. Yeah, okay, yeah, exactly, exactly. So, and that's what we review at the beginning of the meeting after we've done that quick round robin, sort of that review of how things are going. It starts with those action steps from the last meeting, okay? So, I mentioned that it's okay to have a brief discussion about other items that might come up during that sort of round robin, but only, you know, only as needed. Only as needed, so hold that thought. All right, now, Patrick talks about a monthly meeting, at least having a meeting on the schedule every month, you know? And it's going to take more than 10 minutes. It's going to take more than 45 minutes because you're looking at something that requires time. It requires information. It's probably going to require some debate and discussion. We'll talk about that in a moment. So, a monthly meeting that's not focusing on those first two type of agenda items, but rather sort of the where should we do our family vacation this year types of agenda items, okay? It could be two items, but usually it's just going to be one. So, you're going to pray and you're going to treat that one item, again, two at the most. Some preparation probably happened before the meeting, right? Someone was assigned to do some research on one option. Another person was assigned to do some research on another option, okay? So, that information needs to be presented. So, there's going to be maybe a little bit of presentation and reporting. And then, some serious discussion probably has to occur. And again, this is not a full blown organizational health workshop. But if you know anything about Len Shione's work in general, he talks a lot about conflict on a team and how so many people are very conflict-averse. So, they don't really have, frankly, you know, pun intended, they don't really have frank and honest discussions with each other as a leadership team. Because they're afraid they're going to hurt someone's feelings or they're afraid someone's going to lash out at them. And certainly, that's not the kind of conflict that we want. But when that team trusts each other and knows that they're all trying to discern what's true about the best decisions and the best direction for that apostolate or that office, it's okay to have some pretty intense debates and discussion, maybe even a little bit heated at times, you know? And this is the type of meeting where that can and probably should happen, okay? Not the simpler agenda item meetings, okay? Because it's usually not needed in those, all right? So, side note, I'm a little obsessed with the number three. People tease me all the time because they'll say, well, Ken, what do you think about that? I'll say, well, I kind of have three thoughts, you know? So, I was thinking quite a while ago, you know, what are three things that a leader needs? What are three things that a leader needs from her or his closest collaborators? Well, there's more than three. But I thought to myself, information, consultation, and implementation. I'm also like an amateur poet, so anything that sort of rhymes together or begins with the same letter, I just think is really cool. So, information, consultation, and implementation. That's the kind of meeting this is, okay? The team is trying to make a decision. The best decisions are usually informed decisions, right? We don't all have all the information we need at all times, but one or more people on the team needs to provide that information. And then consultation, right? Okay, based on what we've heard, here's what I think is the best decision to make or the best direction to go, and here's why, here's the pros and here's the cons. And then one or more other people says, well, great, here's the way I see it. Here's an alternative, okay? So we're giving advice based on our experience and our expertise, okay? And then implementation. Sooner or later, a decision has to be made. And different teams make decisions in different ways, but once the decision is made, it needs to be implemented. It needs to be implemented. So information, consultation, and implementation. I already talked about conflict. Another thing that Patrick says, and again, this kind of blows some people's minds, because some people, like I'm obsessed with the number three, some people are obsessed with consensus. We have to have consensus. A good leader gets everybody to agree on everything, you know? And Patrick says consensus is overrated. Consensus is overrated. It can be a blessing, especially when it comes quickly, but this obsession with consensus, and again, this is Patrick, but it kind of resonates with me, it doesn't give enough credit to mature adults. Most mature adults know that other people aren't always going to see things the same way that they see them. What people appreciate is an opportunity to express themselves. You know, here's the direction I think we should go. Here's the reasons why. Here's the possible downside. And when I've had a chance to do that, I know that not everyone's going to end up agreeing with me any more than I'm going to end up, you know, completely. I mean, I changed my mind, of course, at times based on discussions, but there are times where even after some debate and discussion, I'm like, you know, if it were only up to me, I don't think I would do it that way, but I understand, I understand why we're going in this direction. I get it and I'm behind it, you know? I'm going to do what I need to do as a team member, and we're going to get this done, and it's going to be good, right? A big part of leadership is usually choosing between two or more good things, right? It should be easy to choose between a good thing and a bad thing. So again, if it were up to me, here's how I would pursue that good goal, but I get why we're doing this and good things are going to happen and I'm behind it all the way. So Patrick calls that disagree and commit. So consensus is overrated. A better way for a team to operate is by the philosophy or approach of disagree and commit. And again, you might feel differently about this, but I'm just kind of sharing those thoughts in this model and this proposal with you, okay? Moving on, we're almost done with the talking, but I do want to give you guys a chance to interact with each other. But let's talk about that quarterly meeting, okay? Patrick suggests putting on the calendar a quarterly opportunity for the team, literally if possible, to get away from the office as a team and spend a day. It could be more than a day. Like I have one coming up for my team, that there's an optional overnight, you know? I can't do it, but that's okay. You're at our treat center, it's an optional overnight. But let's say a day at least. And this is where we're going to get into those should we have another baby types of questions. Those bigger topics that... they're not always like that, like that analogy doesn't work perfectly. But maybe there's some training and education that we need as a team, as a professional development. Maybe there's a major church document that's just come out. And we need to take some time as a team to digest it and really process it together. Maybe there's a consultation of some sort going on. Some of you have maybe been involved in... like when things like... I remember when the National Directory for Catechesis was in the works, oftentimes those things are sent out in draft forms and bishops are invited to seek consultation. What did I just say? Consultation. They're asked to seek consultation. And do the people in their diocese have any suggested edits or alterations for this document? We're sort of always in the middle of a synod of bishops because they tend to happen like every three years. But more and more in recent years, especially depending on the topic, there's usually a preparation process for the synod, right? The synod of bishops, they're looking for input. They really are looking for input and feedback. So something like that. I'm just using these things as examples, but there are things that sometimes the team really benefits from doing together. And it's not going to get done in an hour or two. It's just a lengthier experience. So yeah, Patrick calls this the quarterly offsite. Schedule a day. It's more than just team building or a fun. It's not just, hey, what's that thing where you fall backwards and count on your team to... I don't think I would do that, mainly because of the laws of physics. I mean, my team would have to have herculean strength to keep me from hitting the ground. But yeah, it's not just a fun field trip or sort of team building in that sense. It's purposeful, but it's about the team learning and growing as a team and participating and contributing to broader efforts in a way that, again, it's going to take more than a couple hours. He also recommends not to overload the schedule too much. This is a meeting where you do want to have a schedule or an agenda, but leave some buffer time for those sidebars, those discussions that can happen maybe in between sessions that then the person comes back to that following session and has maybe a deeper insight because they followed up with their colleague in between things. So before we get into a little bit of sharing and discussion here, I want to kind of sort of summarizing, wrapping up. A lot of people do dislike meetings and there's lots of reasons for that and that's going to vary from person to person. But hopefully this resonates with you a little bit, this reality that there really are different kinds of agenda items and people often don't treat them in kind of a sensible way. So it ends up being very frustrating and sometimes ends up producing more work than it's worth. So Patrick's solution is to have more meetings which seems counterintuitive, but the meetings are very, they vary dramatically in length and frequency and in the types of agenda items that they're meant to address. When this is applied well, effectively I should say, work actually gets done during the meeting. There's less work to do in between the meetings resulting from the fact that it was a bad meeting. Decisions often get made in real time. It's like we've, again, we've had a great informed discussion and we've looked at several options and so this is the way we're going to go. Even if the decision isn't made in real time, the leader has enough information at that point maybe to take it to prayer and make that decision that needs to be made. Again, especially those two types of meetings that were described as the third and fourth of the four, they can be great opportunities to learn and grow as a team and to stay up to speed on current developments in whatever your field is, okay? So that was a lot of talking and again, for some of you it was a review, but let me do the flip side of the question as before. Raise your hand if this is more or less the first time you've ever heard of this little strategy or attempt, okay? So a few folks, I saw some of you had read Death by Meeting before but maybe you've come across this in some other way. So here's what I'd love you to do. Connect with at least one person nearby you, maybe two or three, but keep the groups relatively small and I'm going to give you a couple questions to process together. As I said yesterday, you can talk about whatever you want but here's some possibilities. First of all, what do you think of this? Is it insane? Is it crazy? What's your reaction to it? Do you have any initial thoughts to it? If you have tried implementing some of these strategies, maybe you could share a success story or two, it's like, yeah, my staff, we went over this and this is how we do our meetings now and this is why it's been more fruitful. And then another option, there's only three that I'm going to give you. If this isn't familiar to you or you've never tried implementing it, what are some ways that you think you could, just based on what you know now and the thoughts you're having now, how could you take some of these principles and maybe adjust the way that you do meetings, okay? So what do you think of it? Good, bad, or ugly? Success stories, if you have any to share. If not, how could you use this maybe to make your meetings a little bit better and more fruitful, okay? So go ahead and do that for a few minutes. I'll call you back together in a little bit, okay? All right, guys, well, again, I promise that I would try to wrap up at a decent time. Some resources, if you haven't seen them yet. So Patrick's secular consulting firm is called The Table Group, so there's some real nice stuff on tablegroup.com. He's also, of course, one of the two founders of Amazing Parish. Gosh, his stuff is really all over the place now, and he's happy to make it available for folks. What's the, I draw a blank on these things because they all sound the same sometimes, but what's the one that the Augustine Institute does for Parish? Is it Renew Parish or something like that? What's it called? Amazing Parish, but then there's another one. Yeah, it's, I get an email every Monday with my motivational quote from Renew Parish or something like that, but it'll come to me. Just search Lanceoni and a lot of stuff will come up. There's also, if you haven't heard of it, there's a consulting firm called the Evangelium Consulting Group. So Evangelium takes Patrick's stuff with his permission and really puts it out there exclusively, really, for Catholic leadership teams. And I think the website is just EvangeliumConsulting.com. So, all right, well, hopefully this has been an opportunity for you to be affirmed in what you probably already sensed intuitively, not just the fact that a lot of people don't like meetings, but maybe why that is. And again, whether this was a review or an introduction, maybe you've got some affirmation or some ideas for how you can apply some of these principles to your situation. I met what I said earlier. These opportunities are blessings for me just listening to folks. And I met what I said about admiring you just for diving in like this and working on your own formation. So let me just, I'm gonna offer a prayer. I wanna, what I said earlier though about not working in isolation. Gosh, if you can connect, I mean, this conference is a great opportunity to connect with people from all over the place. So it's not just about geography, but if you do, if you are able to connect every now and then with someone who does what you do, who's also a little bit physically close to you, because a lot of times the culture in one part of the country, of course, is slightly different than the culture in another part of the country, that's so important. And whether it's this or some of us were talking about the Apostle of Focus and they have the SEEK conference in early January every year, they're trying to develop what they call the Making Missionary Disciples Track, which is for people like us who aren't college students and we're not focused missionaries, but we're in ministry either at the Paris or Diocesan or school level. So that SEEK conference can be a nice place. We run into fellow Diocesan leaders there more and more. All right. Thank you. And again, thanks for just connecting with folks and I think friendships grow from things like this and they're encouraging for us as we do the work God has given us to do. The name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we pause at this moment in a great week to praise you, to thank you for the opportunity that this conference presents and to ask your continued blessings on all of us, on every area of our lives and especially in this work of ministry and leadership that you have called us to for your glory and the salvation of souls. And again, we pray in the most holy name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. I think it's about 1155, so we're good to go. God bless, guys.