A meeting is a gathering of two or more people, at the same time (in person or remotely), to work toward a shared result.

1. Explain running meetings well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Reliably run meetings that have all four of these:
   1. Results: the meeting produces what it was called for, such as a decision, a plan, or a solved problem.
   2. Enjoyment: people find the meeting worthwhile and pleasant to attend.
   3. Connection: people leave feeling more connected to each other.
   4. Efficiency: little wasted time, effort, cost, hassle, or conflict.

• Progress on what matters
  • Many results need a group: a decision people will support, a plan that uses everyone’s knowledge, a problem no one can solve alone. Getting them moves a project, a team, or a family toward what it is trying to achieve.
• Less waste
  • Meetings use a lot of time. A well-run meeting gets the result fast; a bad one wastes hours for everyone in the room.
• Time well spent
  • A good meeting feels good to be in: focused, friendly, and over on time. You leave with energy instead of relief that it’s over.
• Stronger relationships
  • Working well together builds trust and support, which are worth having for their own sake.
• People keep showing up
  • When meetings are enjoyable and worthwhile, people come prepared and want to take part.
• A skill people notice
  • People who run good meetings are trusted, sought out, and given more to lead.

• Everyone’s time at once
  • A one-hour meeting with eight people costs eight hours.
• Preparation and follow-up
  • Good meetings take work before and after, not just during.
• Interruptions
  • Meetings break up time that people need for focused work.
• Scheduling
  • Finding a time that works for everyone can be hard and can slow things down.

• When people need to decide, plan, or solve a problem together, and talking it through helps.
• When trust or relationships are at stake.
• It matters less when an email, a message, or a shared document would get the result with less effort.

• Anyone who runs or attends meetings, at work, at home, or in the community.
• Most of all, managers, team and project leads, committee chairs, teachers, and anyone who brings people together to get things done.

A five-person team needs to choose one of three software vendors. Ana runs the meeting.

1. Preparing: Ana sets the goal: choose a vendor by the end of the meeting. She sends a one-page comparison two days ahead, invites the four people who will use the software and the budget owner, and books 45 minutes.
2. Leading the discussion: She opens by stating the goal. Each person gives their view in turn. When a side issue about training comes up, she notes it for later and returns to the vendors.
3. Deciding: The team agreed at the start that the budget owner would decide after hearing everyone. She picks the second vendor, and everyone can say why.
4. Closing and following through: The meeting ends with three action items, each with an owner and a due date. Ana sends the notes that afternoon and checks on the items a week later.

The result: a decision the team supports, made in 40 minutes, and a signed contract two weeks later.

Visitors’ cars keep blocking driveways on a short street. Sam, who chairs the neighborhood committee, calls a meeting.

1. Preparing: Sam sets the goal: agree on a plan to keep the driveways clear. He invites the six households on the street, asks two neighbors to bring photos and dates of blocked driveways, and books an hour in the community room.
2. Leading the discussion: He opens with the goal and one ground rule: one person speaks at a time. Each neighbor says how the problem affects them, and then the group lists possible fixes. When two neighbors start arguing about an old dispute, he brings the talk back to the list.
3. Deciding: The group agreed at the start to choose a plan everyone can live with. They settle on painted curb markings and a sign for visitors.
4. Closing and following through: Two volunteers take the action items: one will ask the city about curb paint by Friday, and one will order the sign by the end of the month. Sam sends the plan to every household, including the one that couldn’t come, and checks back in two weeks.

The result: a plan every neighbor at the table supports, and clear driveways a month later.

The same recipe works for meetings of every kind. Here is what it produced in two more.

• A family plans a holiday trip
  • Twenty minutes at the kitchen table end with dates, a budget, and who books what.
• A remote project team holds its weekly check-in
  • In fifteen minutes on a video call, everyone learns the week’s priorities and who needs help.

• Each starts with a goal that says what the meeting should produce.
• Each follows the same four steps.
• In each, the group knew how it would decide before it decided.
• Each ends with a result people can act on, and everyone knows who does what next.

Nobody gets good at meetings by reading about them. You get good by running the recipe many times and improving each time.

1. Try: Run the recipe on a real meeting.
2. Look back: Compare the meeting’s results, and what they cost, with the standard for meetings, and find the step where things went wrong.
3. Improve: Fix that one thing, then run the recipe again on your next meeting.

Repeat the loop until you reliably meet the standard.

A TwF (task with feedback) is a task you attempt, paired with feedback that compares your attempt with a standard.

• TwFs are how you run the loop: you run a meeting, find your gaps, close them, and repeat until you reliably meet the standard.
• They show whether you’ve learned: you meet the standard when you can pass the Mastery TwFs on your own, months after you stop practicing.
• They keep you from fooling yourself. Reading about meetings makes running one feel easy; a TwF shows whether you can do it.
• They save time. You work on your gaps, not on what you already know.

TwFs come in four levels, from a first try to the full standard: Basics, Apply, Range, and Mastery.

A meeting that happened and felt fine can pass for a success even when it produced little. Looking honestly at each meeting’s result, and at what it cost, shows whether the meeting was worth holding and what to change next time.

1. Explain what a result is well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Judge honestly what each meeting produced, compared with its goal and with what it cost.

A goal is a result that a person or group intends to achieve.

A clear goal tells everyone what the meeting is for, so the group can aim at it and know when it’s done.

1. Explain what a goal is well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Set goals for your meetings that say what each meeting should produce.

An agenda is the planned sequence of steps a meeting will follow to reach its goals.

An agenda turns a goal into steps the group can follow, so the meeting gets there on time instead of wandering.

1. Explain what an agenda is well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Build agendas whose steps lead your meetings to their goals.

A decision rule is the method a group uses to make a decision.

Agreeing on how you’ll decide before you decide prevents stalls and arguments, and makes the decision easier to accept.

1. Explain what a decision rule is well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Choose a decision rule that fits each decision, and make it clear before the group decides.

An action item is a task agreed in a meeting, with an owner and a due date.

Action items turn a meeting’s results into work that gets done, so the meeting pays off.

1. Explain what an action item is well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Close your meetings with action items that people accept and complete.

Running a simple meeting means taking a short meeting of a few people through all four steps of the recipe.

A simple meeting is your first full turn of the Try-Improve Loop, and it shows you which step to work on next.

1. Use result, goal, agenda, decision rule, and action item to run the recipe on a simple meeting, such as a short meeting of two or three people to make one decision, well enough to meet the standard for meetings.

Deciding whether to meet means choosing between a meeting and another way of getting the result.

Many meetings shouldn’t happen, and skipping them saves everyone’s time for the ones that matter.

1. Call a meeting only when it’s the best way to get the result, and use a message or shared document when that would get it with less effort.

The right conditions are the people, information, authority, and time a meeting needs to reach its goals.

Without the right conditions, even a well-run meeting can’t reach its goal.

1. Explain the right conditions well enough that others can learn to apply them.
2. Line up the right people, information, authority, and time before your meetings start.

A role, in a meeting, is a set of responsibilities that one person takes on.

Clear roles make sure every job the meeting needs gets done, without one person having to do them all.

1. Explain what a role is well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Define each role your meeting needs clearly enough that the person knows what to do and the group can tell whether it was done.
3. Make sure each role is filled and done to its standard: one person agrees to own it, and the group checks it at the close.

A ground rule is an explicit rule for how participants behave in a meeting.

Ground rules tell everyone how to behave, so the meeting stays fair and focused without the leader having to police it.

1. Explain what a ground rule is well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Set and uphold a few ground rules that help your meetings work.

Facilitation is guiding how a group works toward a shared goal.

Good facilitation lets a group use everyone’s knowledge and reach its goal, instead of being steered by whoever talks most.

1. Explain facilitation well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Facilitate meetings so the group reaches its goal.

Opening a meeting means starting it by making its goals, agenda, and ground rules clear to everyone.

A clear opening gets everyone aiming at the same result from the first minute.

1. Open your meetings so everyone knows the goals, agenda, and ground rules before the discussion starts.

A meeting’s tone is how the meeting feels to the people in it.

A warm tone makes people enjoy the meeting, speak up, and leave more connected.

1. Set and keep a warm tone, so people enjoy your meetings and leave more connected.

Staying on track means keeping a meeting’s discussion on its agenda and within its time.

Staying on track gets the result in the time you promised, which respects everyone’s time.

1. Keep your meetings on the agenda and on time, and bring off-topic turns back without shutting people down.

Hearing every voice means giving everyone in a meeting a fair chance to contribute.

When everyone contributes, the group gets the best ideas and people feel they belong.

1. Draw out quiet people and balance dominant ones, so what everyone knows reaches the group.

Disagreement, in a meeting, is people holding different views on the same question.

Handled well, disagreement brings out better ideas and risks the group would miss; handled badly, it derails the meeting.

1. Explain disagreement well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Handle disagreement in your meetings so it improves the group’s thinking instead of derailing the meeting.

Weighing options means comparing possible choices against what the group wants to achieve.

Weighing real options against the goal leads to better choices than going with the first idea or the loudest voice.

1. Help your groups lay out real options and weigh them against their goals.

A clear decision is a choice that everyone in the group understands the same way.

A decision people understand the same way gets carried out; a vague one gets reopened or carried out three different ways.

1. State each decision so everyone in your meetings understands it the same way.

Buy-in is a person’s willingness to support and carry out a group’s decision.

People carry out decisions they support, so buy-in turns a decision into results.

1. Explain buy-in well enough that others can learn to apply it.
2. Reach decisions your groups support and carry out, even when not everyone agreed.

Summarizing results means stating, at the end of a meeting, what it produced.

A closing summary makes sure everyone leaves with the same understanding of what was decided and what happens next.

1. End your meetings by summarizing what they produced, so everyone leaves with the same understanding.

Sharing results means making a meeting’s results available to everyone who needs them.

Sharing results promptly keeps everyone, including people who weren’t there, working from the same page.

1. Share each meeting’s results promptly with everyone who needs them, including people who weren’t there.

Following up means checking on a meeting’s action items until they are done.

Following up is what turns action items into finished work.

1. Follow up on your meetings’ action items so they get done.

Meeting technology is the set of tools that let people take part in a meeting from different places.

When the tools work, remote people can take part fully, and the meeting doesn’t lose time to tech problems.

1. Choose and set up meeting technology so everyone can see, hear, and take part.

Equal participation means everyone in a meeting having the same chance to take part, wherever they join from.

When remote people take part as fully as those in the room, the group gets everyone’s knowledge and no one feels left out.

1. Lead remote and hybrid meetings so everyone takes part equally and stays engaged, wherever they join from.

Connection at a distance means people who aren’t in the same room feeling part of one group.

Connection keeps a group that rarely meets in person working as a team, and makes the work more enjoyable.

1. Build connection among people who join your meetings from different places.