Meet only for discussion or decisions, send the agenda and what each person must prepare in advance, and invite only those who need to be there. End every meeting with written decisions and tasks, each with an owner and a deadline, and review them at the start of the next meeting.
Step by step
- 1
Ask whether you need a meeting
Updates and information can go in a message or a written report, and meetings are for discussion, problem solving and decisions.
- 2
An agenda with a clear purpose
A few items, each with a set time and the decision required, sent to attendees before the meeting with any figures they need to read.
- 3
Only the people you need
Those who own the decision, those who hold the information and those who will carry it out, while people who only need the outcome can read the minutes.
- 4
Manage the time and the discussion
Start and finish on time, and appoint someone to run the discussion and bring it back to the item when it drifts, and someone to record the decisions.
- 5
Close with decisions and tasks
Every decision written down, every task with one owner and a deadline, and the minutes sent the same day.
- 6
Open with follow-up
Start the next meeting with the previous tasks: what was done, what is late, and why.
A meeting without minutes or task owners gets held again a week later to discuss the same subject, and the team's time turns into talk with no result.
- how to make meetings productive
- rules for running meetings