Running Effective Meetings: Principles and Practices
Meetings are expensive — the combined salary cost of everyone in a room for an hour is significant. Most meetings are inefficient: wrong attendees, no clear purpose, no agenda, and decisions that weren't made get made again in the next meeting. These principles make meetings worth the cost.
Before the Meeting
- Is this meeting necessary? Could the outcome be achieved asynchronously — a document, a message, a shared comment thread? Async first reduces meeting load.
- Clear purpose: Every meeting has a specific outcome. "Catch up" is not a purpose. "Agree on the Q3 campaign strategy" is.
- Agenda: Share agenda in advance. Agenda items with owners and time allocations — not a list of topics to wander through.
- Right attendees: Only invite people whose input is necessary. More attendees = more expensive + less focused discussion. Inform others with a summary after.
During the Meeting
- Start on time — waiting for latecomers penalises punctual attendees
- Assign a facilitator — they manage time, ensure agenda is followed, draw out quiet voices
- Assign a note-taker — not the facilitator
- Decisions are named explicitly: "We've decided X" — not implied through discussion
After the Meeting
- Notes distributed within 24 hours with decisions, action items, owners, and deadlines
- Action items tracked in the project management tool — not just in the meeting notes
- Was this meeting necessary? Brief retro — could it be shorter, less frequent, or replaced with async?