Arlene McCoyMeetings are not the enemy. Bad meetings are. A meeting without a purpose eats an hour from every person in the room, and the follow-up questions eat another. The good news is that a few simple rules make most meetings shorter and far more useful.
No agenda, no meeting
Every invite should state what the meeting is for and what decision or outcome it should produce. If the organiser cannot write that in two sentences, the meeting probably should be a written update instead.
Invite fewer people
Invite the people who need to decide or contribute. Everyone else can read the notes. Smaller meetings move faster and give everyone a real chance to speak.
Start with the decision
Put the most important item first, while people are fresh. Status updates belong in writing beforehand – share them on the project in Saasar and use the meeting only for questions and decisions.
Assign owners before you leave
The last five minutes are the most valuable. Go through every action item and give it:
- One owner
- A due date
- A place where progress will be visible
Turn them into tasks right away, so nothing depends on someone’s memory or notebook.
Default to 25 or 50 minutes
Shorter defaults leave a buffer between meetings for breaks and preparation. You will be surprised how often a 30-minute topic fits in 25.
Review your recurring meetings
Recurring meetings tend to outlive their purpose. Once a quarter, review each one: is it still needed, could it be shorter, could it happen less often? Cancelling one weekly hour-long meeting for eight people gives the team back more than 400 hours a year.
Write it down
Short notes with decisions and owners make meetings useful for people who could not attend – and for the attendees a week later. Keep them attached to the project so they are easy to find.
Try a meeting-free day
Many teams pick one day a week without internal meetings. It gives everyone a guaranteed stretch of focus time and forces the rest of the week’s meetings to be a little more deliberate. Start with a half day if a full day feels like too much, and see what happens to the amount of work that gets finished.
Better meetings are not about strict rules. They are about respect for everyone’s time.
