Organizational Drag Fix: Meetings

In the spirit of helping others reduce organizational drag in their organization, I am sharing the rules for setting meetings which I always follow:

• The meeting subject should be short (I aim for four words or less) and relate to the topic / purpose of the meeting (‘quick catch-up’ is not a good meeting subject, ‘catch-up on liquidity framework re-vamp’ is, or even better ‘liquidity framework re-vamp catch-up’);

• There needs to be a stated purpose;

• There needs to be an agenda (bonus points for allotting time to each section);

• Any person that has been invited needs to have a clear and obvious reason for being in the meeting.  If not, you must explain to them why they have been invited (and, like with sending proper emails, do not invite anyone and everyone just because you can);

• Those that you have indicated ‘optional’ you must tell them why you sent them the invite if they aren’t truly required (e.g., is it an FYI only, is it in case they need to redelegate, is it in case you are offering them an opportunity to provide feedback offline before the meeting should they wish); and/or

• What documents need to be summarized and attached (or if not yet available, indicate what will be provided before the meeting and when).

Most importantly, I will always ask myself, does this even need to be a meeting, or would summarizing details in an email requesting acknowledgement be better?  Or could this be discussed with just a simple ping on Teams/slack for a conversation/call? 

With these rules, it makes it easy to keep a meeting succinct, on track, and concluding with a proper resolution at the end.  It forces me to make sure anyone in the meeting is there for a reason and I am not wasting their time.  It’s how I’m able to command attention and not get stuck repeating myself when it turns out someone on the call got distracted and wasn’t paying attention (which I’m definitely guilty of!).  And it’s partially how I’m able to get more work done in a shorter period of time #WorkSmarterNotHarder. 

I have been known to decline meetings where the above information isn't included and have always given my team permission to do likewise. I invite you to do the same. (And if you really want to change behaviours, send them this write-up as explanation for your decline.)

Thoughts and opinions are purely my own, no ChatGPT here.  The above is just a brief conceptual summary, for more specific details, feel free to use ChatGPT.  I’d suggest a prompt along the lines of:

I need to organize a meeting on [XYZ] with [parties] to discuss [ABC].  Can you please write a meeting invite which clearly states the purpose, has an appropriate meeting subject, and includes an agenda and proposed time allotments for each item.