Whether to meet at all
A meeting is the most expensive tool in the office: eight people for an hour is a full working day. It earns that cost when a group has to decide something, untangle a disagreement or build on each other's thinking in real time. It does not earn it for status updates, which read faster than they are spoken, or for announcements that invite no discussion. Write one sentence that finishes "By the end of this meeting we will have." If you cannot finish it, do not send the invitation.
Before anyone sits down
Invite the people who must decide and the people who hold information the decision needs, and nobody else. Past seven or eight attendees a discussion turns into an audience. Send the agenda at least a day ahead with each item written as an outcome, such as "Choose between the two vendor bids," plus a time allowance and any reading attached. Schedule twenty-five or fifty minutes rather than thirty or sixty, so that people with back-to-back calendars can arrive on time for the next one.
In the room
- Start at the stated minute, because waiting for latecomers teaches everyone that the start time is a suggestion.
- Restate the purpose and the decisions needed in one or two sentences.
- Name someone other than yourself to take notes, since you cannot steer and write at once.
- Take the hardest item first while attention is fresh.
- Move tangents to a visible list of items to handle later, and return to the agenda.
- Ask quieter attendees by name for their view before the loudest voice settles the matter.
- Close each item by saying the decision aloud, along with who owns the next step and by what date.
The part that makes it count
Stop five minutes early and read the list of actions back to the room. Within a few hours, send a short recap containing the decisions, the owners and the dates. A recap is the only record most meetings ever get, and without it the same conversation will be held again in three weeks. On video calls, ask for cameras on in small groups, call on people by name rather than asking the void for comments, and watch the chat, where the most useful objection is often sitting.
Tip Review your recurring meetings every quarter. Cancel one for a month as an experiment, and restore it only if someone can say what was lost.
