Tips for Conducting Efficient Workflow Meetings

How I run larger cross-functional meetings as Chief of Staff at a company that is moving fast: 1) Align with execs before the meeting. Quick 1:1's or async slack alignment. The goal is clarity on what we’re solving for. (Earlier in my career, I avoided this; I didn’t want to waste their time. But skipping it made the meeting less efficient every time because we would burn the first 10 minutes getting on the same page) 2) Send a pre-read 24–48 hours in advance. Include: – Agenda – Materials to review – Decisions or asks The more specific, the better. 3) Use meeting time for decisions, not updates. This isn’t a meeting to go line-by-line through your status doc. If the goal is just updates, you can just send a doc. This live time is for discussion! Unblocking, prioritizing, or choosing a path. 4) Turn on AI notes. I use Google Gemini so I can stay off my keyboard and pay attention to the room. 5) Ask for deadlines. People hesitate or avoid this point because they don’t want to seem like they’re assigning work. But without dates, there is more room for confusion. Push for clarity while the room is still full. 6) Send a recap within 24 hours. AI drafts it, I edit and send. Keep it short: what got decided, who’s doing what, by when. As you can see, most of the work should happen before the meeting. In the room, my job is to keep us from drifting. I'm curious though, what do you do before a meeting to make sure it’s worth holding?

If you need “the minutes” from a meeting you were actually in, your system’s already broken. Why? Because real work doesn’t need your recap. It needs decisions. When a meeting ends and nobody can tell you what got locked in, that’s not collaboration. That’s called project amnesia. How do you know that you’re project has this dreaded disease? Someone asks, “Wait… what did we decide again?” two days later. Tasks are aimless, with no owner and no due date. You schedule a follow-up… just to understand the last follow-up. Ugh! Stop writing meeting minutes and try this instead. 1. Open with outcomes (3 bullets, max) • Start every meeting with what you hope to accomplish. • Something like: “By the end of this meeting, we’ll pick the vendor, approve the budget, and lock the date.” • Everyone knows what they'll walk away with once the end is defined. 2. Make a decision log in real time • It's a shared doc that's visible to everyone in the room. • It has simple headers: Decision → Owner → Deadline → Risk (if any) • If it doesn’t get logged when you are in the room, it didn’t happen. 3. Use the O/A/D rule • Every discussion should include an owner, action, and deadline—before you move on. • Owners voice their commitment out loud. • Deadlines use actual dates, not vague timelines like “next sprint.” 4. Apply the disagree & commit rule • Have a debate (but only for 5 minutes). • Then make the call, use the decision log, and move on. • No revisiting it next week unless something critical changes. 5. 60-second close • At the end, someone reads the decision log out loud. • Ask if anything's unclear, and if it is... fix it right there. • Then post the decision log to your project workspace. 6. 24-hour recommitment • Send out an automatic summary of the decision log to the team. • Decisions, owners, deadlines, and nothing else. • No extra stuff. Just the log. We need to stop clinging to meeting minutes and start capturing commitments. When you run meetings like this, nobody hunts for minutes. They’re busy shipping what you decided.

$36,000,000,000… That’s how much money U.S. businesses waste every year in useless meetings. That’s the equivalent of having 600,000 people each making $60,000 to sit in an office all day and do absolutely nothing. At Process Street, we’ve eliminated 90% of our “useless meeting time” And we made a guide on how we did it… It’s called, How to Run Business Meetings That Aren’t a Complete Waste of Time: 1. have clear objectives EVERY meeting needs a clear, written statement identifying the purpose of the meeting. The same way you hold an employee accountable to goals, you need to hold a meeting accountable to its objective. A good objective of a meeting could be the executive team discussing a strategic change and how to roll it out to the company A bad objective would be a roundtable status update that could’ve been an email. 2. Invite the right people If the meeting is not relevant to someone’s work. They are better off missing the meeting and just doing their work. 3. Stick to the agenda Do not just walk in to a 60-90 minute calendar block and start to casually talk about the objective. That’s a recipe for wasted time. Instead, decide what is going to be discussed in the meeting beforehand, set an agenda, and allot time for each specific item. Send the agenda to people inside the meeting before it begins. If they understand and can visualize the agenda throughout the meeting, it’s WAY more likely the agenda is actually followed. 4. Don’t let it be derailed Most meetings get derailed and off topic, especially when someone starts rambling. Whoever is in charge of the meeting needs to rule it with an iron fist and frankly cut people off if they get off topic. My policy here is to interrupt the rambler first and ask for forgiveness later. It may be a rude thing to do, but every 5 minutes someone rambles could mean 1 hour of wasted time if 12 other people are in the meeting. 5. Start and end on time If you have flex time where people can show up a minute or two late, or the meeting can go a minute or two over to finish the conversation, then you’ll always have meetings where both of those things happen. Just as you would hold the meeting accountable to its objective, hold it accountable to the clock. 6. No distractions Have you ever been in a meeting with someone constantly checking their phone? Or a zoom call where it’s obvious someone is doing emails? Create a 0 tolerance policy for this. Or, if someone believes they can check out of the conversation, they probably should have not been involved in the first place. 7. Create memos Meetings are useless without stated outcomes. Whatever the objective of the meeting was, create a memo with notes on who talked about what, key takeaways, action items, and whether the objective was completed or not. Then, share the memo with everyone who was in the meeting. Follow this process and I promise you'll run meetings 90% better than you currently are.

Anyone else suffer from meeting overload? It’s a big deal. Simply put too many meetings means less time available for actual work, plus constantly attending meetings can be mentally draining, and often they simply are not required to accomplish the agenda items. At the same time sometimes it’s unavoidable. No matter where you are in your career, here are a few ways that I tackle this topic so that I can be my best and hold myself accountable to how my time is spent. I take 15 minutes every Friday to look at the week ahead and what is on my calendar. I follow these tips to ensure what is on the calendar should be and that I’m prepared. It ensures that I have a relevant and focused communications approach, and enables me to focus on optimizing productivity, outcomes and impact. 1. Review the meeting agenda. If there’s no agenda I send an email asking for one so you know exactly what you need to prepare for, and can ensure your time is correctly prioritized. You may discover you’re actually not the correct person to even attend. If it’s your meeting, set an agenda because accountability goes both ways. 2. Define desired outcomes. What do you want/need from the meeting to enable you to move forward? Be clear about it with participants so you can work collaboratively towards the goal in the time allotted. 3. Confirm you need the meeting. Meetings should be used for difficult or complex discussions, relationship building, and other topics that can get lost in text-based exchanges. A lot of times though we schedule meetings that we don’t actually require a meeting to accomplish the task at hand. Give ourselves and others back time and get the work done without that meeting. 4. Shorten the meeting duration. Can you cut 15 minutes off your meeting? How about 5? I cut 15 minutes off some of my recurring meetings a month ago. That’s 3 hours back in a week I now have to redirect to high impact work. While you’re at it, do you even need all those recurring meetings? It’s never too early for a calendar spring cleaning. 5. Use meetings for discussion topics, not FYIs. I save a lot of time here. We don’t need to speak to go through FYIs (!) 6. Send a pre-read. The best meetings are when we all prepare for a meaningful conversation. If the topic is a meaty one, send a pre-read so participants arrive with a common foundation on the topic and you can all jump straight into the discussion and objectives at hand. 7. Decline a meeting. There’s nothing wrong with declining. Perhaps you’re not the right person to attend, or there is already another team member participating, or you don’t have bandwidth to prepare. Whatever the reason, saying no is ok. What actions do you take to ensure the meetings on your calendar are where you should spend your time? It’s a big topic that we can all benefit from, please share your tips in the comments ⤵️ #careertips #productivity #futureofwork

Most meetings don’t fail in the room. They fail before they start… and after they end. A meeting is not a 60-minute calendar block. It’s a process with 3 stages: Before. During. After. If you fix these, meetings become productive instead of performative. 1. Start with a written purpose (Before) If the meeting objective cannot be written in one clear sentence, cancel it. Bad: “Let’s discuss the project.” Good: “By the end, we will decide X and assign ownership for Y.” No purpose = no meeting. 2. Invite only owners, not spectators (Before) Meetings are not webinars. If someone is not: Deciding Contributing critical input Owning an action They don’t need to be there. Fewer people = faster decisions. 3. Share material in advance (Before) Meetings are for discussion and decisions, not silent reading. If people are seeing slides for the first time in the meeting, you’ve already lost half the time. Send pre-reads. Expect people to come prepared. 4. Run the meeting like a decision factory (During) Every agenda item must end in one of three outcomes: Decision made Action assigned (with owner + deadline) Explicitly parked If conversation is interesting but going nowhere, park it. Meetings are not thinking-out-loud therapy sessions. 5. Close the loop fast (After) The real work starts when the meeting ends. Within 24 hours, share: Decisions taken Actions, owners, deadlines What was parked If follow-ups are not tracked, meetings are just expensive conversations. A good meeting starts before the meeting and ends long after it. Preparation creates clarity. Follow-up creates results. Everything in between is just facilitation. Are you running or ruining your meetings? Which one of these tips makes most sense to you? ++++ I try to share practical, direct, no “cute crap" work/career tips. Follow me at Anshuman Tiwari and press the bell icon twice on my profile to get notifications when I post.

How to make your meetings 100x better: • Before each meeting, decide on the desired outcome. What needs to be happen by the end of this call? • The organizer should share an agenda at least 24h prior. Each item should have a clear purpose: – To discuss – To decide – To inform – To align • One person should always drive the meeting and be responsible for keeping everyone on time, on topic, and accountable. • If something can be achieved asynchronously (email, Loom, Google Docs), cancel the meeting, always. • Limit the number of participants in the meeting. If it's not clear whether someone should attend, leave them off and send them the Granola notes after. • Avoid recurring or standing meetings. Most of the time, "fake" work is created to fill time for the purpose of looking productive. • Default to 25-minute meetings. It instills focus and gives everyone a breather before the next one. • Disagreement is the most valuable thing that can happen in a meeting. When everyone agrees, no value is created. Instead, the person driving the meeting should nurture productive debate if it comes up. • Start the meeting by sharing data and insights, not anecdotes. This gives everyone a common starting point from which they can form their point of view. • Practice radical transparency by recording, transcribing, and documenting everything to be sent out over (easier than ever now!) • End every meeting with clear decisions and action items. No takeaways = wasted time. These are some of the things I've learned from my time at Google, Meta, and now Fibe. I hope it helps!

Meetings are a common part of our professional lives, whether they involve startup pitches or strategic discussions within our portfolio companies. While these gatherings have the potential to drive progress, they can be equally frustrating if they lack a clear purpose. In my experience, I've come to appreciate that meetings can truly excel when approached strategically. Recently, I came across the meeting strategy of Matt Mochary, a renowned coach who has worked with influential venture capital firms such as Sequoia, Y Combinator, Benchmark, General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, and many others. As per Matt, …. 📍𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗮 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗢𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿 - The Meeting Owner is like the captain of the ship. They take responsibility for 👉organizing, 👉 facilitating, 👉.ensuring … the meeting's success. - This role is essential to avoid the 'tragedy of the commons,' where no one feels accountable, leading to unproductive meetings. 📍 𝗗𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲: -Clearly define the purpose of the meeting, such as making a decision, sharing updates, or brainstorming ideas. -At the end of the meeting, each participant should assess whether the stated purpose was achieved, providing a clear measure of success. 📍𝗔𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 - Encourage participants to prepare in advance by sharing updates, issues, or proposals asynchronously. -This reduces the need for lengthy status updates during the meeting and allows for more focused discussions. 📍𝗘𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗔𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸: - The Meeting Owner ensures that participants complete their asynchronous preparation. -Teaching participants how to do this effectively and offering support if needed can increase compliance. 📍𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲-𝗕𝗼𝘅 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮 -While asynchronous work is vital, certain aspects require synchronous discussion. -Allocate specific time slots for personal connections, issue discussions, and critical feedback to keep the meeting on track. 📍𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: - After discussing issues or proposals, it's crucial to document action items. - Assign a Directly Responsible Individual for each action, ensuring clear accountability, and specific due dates. 📍𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: -Use an action tracker tool to monitor the progress of assigned actions. -Regularly revisit the tracker in future meetings to ensure accountability and completion. 📍𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸: -Encourage participants to provide written feedback after each meeting. -This feedback loop helps in improving meeting efficiency, addressing concerns, and making everyone feel heard. How do you currently approach meetings in your professional life? Are there any specific challenges you face or strategies you've found effective? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Post source: Matt Mochary #startups #meetings #productivity

We don't prepare for effective meetings. But we can save time and boost outcomes with one rule. Here's how: Early in my career, I noticed meetings were often unproductive. 50% of the time was wasted without a clear agenda. So, I started using a 6-step formula to run meetings. 1. Prepare a Clear Agenda ↳ Create and distribute it in advance ↳ Include key topics: progress updates, challenges, tasks, decisions ↳ Set clear objectives for the meeting 2. Focus on Key Updates and Issues ↳ Start by reviewing action items from the previous meeting ↳ Have team members provide brief updates on their tasks and progress ↳ Discuss any roadblocks, challenges, or risks ↳ Prioritize the most important items for discussion 3. Encourage Participation ↳ Actively engage all team members to share updates and insights ↳ Allow time for problem-solving and brainstorming solutions 4. Manage Time Effectively ↳ Stick to the scheduled time for each agenda item ↳ Keep the meeting focused and on-track ↳ Consider setting a time limit for individual updates 5. Document Outcomes and Next Steps ↳ Assign clear action items and owners for follow-up tasks ↳ Summarize key decisions made and next steps ↳ Share meeting minutes/notes with all attendees afterward 6. Follow Up on Action Items ↳ Track commitments and hold people accountable. ↳ Ensure decisions are acted upon to maintain momentum Save this meeting rule: clear agenda → effective outcomes. Implement like a pro → Run meetings like a boss

Most meetings waste time. → Too many slides → Too many words with no meaning → Too few results People show up out of obligation. Not interest. Here’s how to run meetings that people look forward to (Because they’re clear, useful, and energizing): 1. Make the purpose painfully clear → Ask yourself: "Why are we meeting?" → "What will be different after it?" → Start with: “The goal of this meeting is…” 2. Invite fewer people → Smaller groups: → Better focus → Faster decisions (and less politics!) 3. Start with insight, not slides → Avoid the “update parade.” → Instead: Share the key issue → Ask a smart question. Invite input fast 4. Use questions to shape the flow → Try: “What’s the real challenge here?” → “What’s blocking progress?” → “What decision needs to be made?” 5. Call on the quiet voices → Don’t let the loudest people dominate → Say: “Let's hear from those we haven’t heard yet” → This builds safety and better decisions. 6. End with clear outcomes → A meeting without action = a wasted hour → End with: What was decided → Who owns what and by when 7. Ask this after every meeting → “Was this worth the time?” → “How could we make it better next time?” → Don't make meetings a default habit Truth is: Great meetings feel like progress. Not pressure. Make your meetings a highlight. Not a headache. 📌 Save this for your next team meeting ♻️ Share it so more people run better meetings 🐾 Follow Andrea Petrone for more.

Let's Make Meetings Great Again 😂 Time is precious. Every meeting should be worth it. But too often, meetings drag. They steal time, drain energy, and achieve nothing. 10 Ways to Run Meetings that Don’t Waste Time 1. Set a clear purpose. - Every meeting needs a goal. - Ask, “What do we need to achieve?” - If there’s no purpose, there’s no point. 2. Share an agenda in advance. - Let people know what to expect. - Preparation leads to better participation. - Include topics, time limits, and outcomes. 3. Invite the right people. - Only include those who truly need to be there. - Smaller groups are more productive. - Respect everyone’s time. 4. Start on time. End on time. - A meeting that drags is a meeting that fails. - Punctuality shows respect. - Set a timer if needed. 5. Stay on topic. - Keep discussions focused on the agenda. - Gently redirect if the conversation strays. - Tangents waste time and energy. 6. Assign roles. - A facilitator keeps things moving. - A note-taker records key points and decisions. - Roles create structure and accountability. 7. Make it actionable. - End every meeting with clear next steps. - Assign tasks with deadlines and owners. - Decisions without action are just talk. 8. Use technology wisely. - Keep virtual meetings short and engaging. - Technology should enhance, not complicate. - Use tools like polls, timers, or shared documents. 9. Encourage participation. - Invite everyone to share their input. - Ask questions like, “What are your thoughts?” - A good meeting isn’t a monologue—it’s a collaboration. 10. Follow up. - Follow-through ensures progress. - Send a summary with action items. - “Here’s what we decided and who’s responsible.” Meetings don’t have to waste time. Done right, meetings: - spark ideas - solve problems - drive results ❓ Which tip will you use in your next meeting? ♻️ Repost to help your network not waste time in meetings. ➕ Follow me (Nathan Crockett, PhD) for daily actionable insights.