The nodding felt like progress.
It wasn’t.
A room full of grunts and consensus is not a meeting. It’s a ritual. A comfortable one. The kind that makes everyone feel productive without anyone actually being productive.
Most organizations believe they run good meetings. They don’t. They run familiar ones.
Here’s the difference. A good meeting ends with fewer open questions than it started with. A familiar meeting ends with a time for the next meeting.
If you want better meetings, stop hoping and start engineering. These ten rules aren’t suggestions. They are the operating system.
The 11 Rules of Great Meetings
- No agenda, no meeting. Send it 24 hours in advance.
- Every meeting has one owner. One. Not two.
- Start on time. Every time. Without apology.
- End five minutes early. Use it to confirm decisions and next steps.
- One decision or outcome must be named before the meeting ends.
- No devices. Presence is the price of admission.
- If you don’t need to be there, you aren’t. Come prepared. Attendance is not respected.
- Silence is not agreement. Name it.
- Every action is named, gets an owner, and has a deadline. Not a team. A person. A date.
- The meeting is only as good as what happens after it. Be sure to close the loop.
- Rate the meeting. Learn from it.
The best organizations don’t have better ideas in their meetings.
They have better commitments, so they’re leaving.
That’s the whole game.
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