How to Run Meetings That Respect Everyone’s Time (Festive Special 5 of 5)

Last week’s issue: Teach them to Fish

Join 7500+ leaders

Looking to start a newsletter? Use Beehiiv (it’s what we use)

What you'll learn today:

With AdQuick, you can now easily plan, deploy and measure campaigns just as easily as digital ads, making them a no-brainer to add to your team’s toolbox.

You can learn more at www.AdQuick.com

Dear Team,

A director told me last week she spends 27 hours a week in meetings. When I asked how many were genuinely useful, she paused. "Maybe six hours? The rest just... happen."

Twenty-one hours—more than half her work time—spent in meetings that don't need to exist or don't need to exist in their current form.

Here's what makes this particularly insidious: bad meetings aren't just inefficient. They actively erode trust, drain energy, and signal that people's time doesn't matter. Every unnecessary meeting is a small betrayal.

But running good meetings isn't about better agendas or parking lots. Those help, but they're tactics. The real issue is that most leaders are running the wrong meeting format for what they're trying to accomplish.

Let me show you what I mean.

Strip away all the labels and there are really only three fundamental types of meetings:

Decision Meetings — Make a specific decision and move forward (30-45 min)

Alignment Meetings — Get everyone on the same page about context or priorities (45-60 min)

Generation Meetings — Create something new—ideas, solutions, strategy (90-120 min)

Most meeting failures happen because leaders run Decision meetings with Generation expectations, or Alignment meetings with Decision formats. You can't brainstorm your way through a decision. You can't decide your way through idea generation.

Here's how to actually run each one.

Before the meeting, send a one-page brief:

The format:

Minutes 0-5: State the decision, options, your recommendation. Don't rehash—assume they read the brief.

Minutes 5-25: Questions, concerns, alternative perspectives. Your job is to listen, not defend.

Minutes 25-35: Make the decision or escalate with a clear escalation path. No "let's schedule a follow-up."

Minutes 35-40: Document decision, rationale, next steps, owners, deadlines. Share before people leave.

What kills it: Discussing options that aren't actually on the table, drifting into problem-solving, or ending without a decision.

Real example: A product leader restructured endless "launch readiness" meetings with one rule: "Every meeting ends with launch/don't launch/defer to [specific date]." Launches that took eight meetings now took two.

Be explicit about what you're aligning on: strategy, priorities, how we work together, or understanding of a complex situation.

The format:

Minutes 0-10: Share context. What's changed? What's the gap you're closing?

Minutes 10-40: Structured discussion:

Minutes 40-50: Synthesize out loud. "Here's what I heard. Is this accurate? What did I miss?"

Minutes 50-60: Document the alignment and how it changes what people do next week.

What kills it: One person talking for 45 minutes, assuming alignment because people nodded, skipping the synthesis step.

Real example: A VP was frustrated her leadership team kept going in different directions despite regular "alignment meetings." She switched to having each leader say "here's how this changes my priorities" out loud. Suddenly they were coordinated.

Your time is better spent creating content, not managing ad campaigns. Google AdSense's automatic ad placement and optimization handles the heavy lifting for you, ensuring the highest-paying, most relevant ads appear on your site.

Earn with Google AdSense

These need space. You can't brainstorm in 30 minutes. Block 90-120 minutes minimum.

The format:

Minutes 0-15: Set context. Share the problem. Get everyone's brain in the same space.

Minutes 15-60: Generate without evaluating. Divergent thinking. No "yes, but"—only "yes, and."

Minutes 60-90: Converge. Cluster ideas. Identify themes. Evaluate feasibility.

Minutes 90-110: Land on 2-3 options worth exploring. Assign owners.

Minutes 110-120: Decide next steps and when to reconvene.

What kills it: Evaluating while generating (shuts down creativity), trying to generate AND decide in one meeting, no psychological safety for half-baked ideas.

Before scheduling anything, ask:

Could this be an async update? If you're just sharing information, write it down.

Could this be a Slack thread? Quick questions with <3 people don't need meetings.

Could this wait until our existing meeting? Don't create new recurring meetings because something came up once.

Am I meeting out of anxiety? Sometimes we call meetings because we feel like we should "do something." That's not a meeting—that's therapy.

Before scheduling any meeting, wait 24 hours and ask if it's still necessary. About 40% of the time, the answer becomes no. That one rule can save your team hundreds of hours a year.

Most meetings fail in the follow-through. Great discussion, then... nothing happens.

The 24-hour documentation rule:

Within 24 hours of any decision or alignment meeting, send:

Not meeting notes. A tight summary someone could read in 90 seconds.

The accountability loop:

At the start of every recurring meeting, spend 5 minutes reviewing decisions from last time. Did they happen? If not, why not? This creates more follow-through than any project management tool.

Most meetings waste time because we treat them as generic containers for "getting together to talk." But decision meetings require different structures than alignment meetings, which require different structures than generation meetings.

Your job isn't to have fewer meetings. It's to be ruthlessly clear about what kind of meeting you're running and structure it accordingly.

Do that, and your team will start to feel like their time actually matters. That might be the most important leadership signal you can send.

This Week's Action:

Look at your calendar for next week. For each meeting:

You don't have to fix all your meetings. Just start with one.

Thank you