Meeting Template

Meetings

Meetings suck. If I have a lot of them, they all seem to bind in a quantum entanglement where I can’t tell if I’m alive or dead.

I haven’t found a way to eradicate meetings, so here’s my template for making them less terrible:

Time box the meeting. Don’t let it bleed past the allotted time. If no time was allotted, set a duration at the start.
Make sure everyone talks. If someone isn’t comfortable, figure out how to change that. If someone isn’t engaged, that’s a different problem - and it still needs to be addressed.
Establish an agenda at the beginning. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Simply address: “At the end of this meeting, what do we hope to take away?” and “What decision needs to be made?”
Use a parking lot for topics that come up but don’t need to be addressed now. If there’s remaining time, explore them. If not, write them down.
Check in halfway through. Ask “Are we done?” See Popcorn Popping.
At 5-10 minutes before the end, ask: What didn’t we discuss but needed to? Summarize takeaways and confirm mutual understanding (or at least an agreed list of unresolved items).
Send a meeting summary, especially if important decisions were made.

For regular meetings (staff meetings, IPMs), I suggest addressing low-hanging-fruit items at the outset, time-boxed to 10-20% of the meeting.

Meeting Prep

If the meeting includes significant decision-making, I do homework and talk to the decision makers in advance. This might sound manipulative, but I think it’s better to enter meetings where the outcome is mostly known.

The reason: minimizing waste. Many people don’t properly prepare for meetings. You can waste a lot of time in spurious brainstorming and objections when someone just needed time to walk through an issue. Or maybe they wanted to be heard. (They can still be heard in the group meeting, but ideally their ideas arrive organized and well-founded from having been discussed in advance.) Or maybe you’ll learn something that changes your mind.