Portico Live: Meeting Makeovers
The Playbook
Your meetings: the baseline
List one recurring meeting you run and one you're invited to. You'll use these two for the rest of the session.
1. No expiration date
Standing meetings may be the only thing at work with no expiration date. Add a sunset clause, so the meeting keeps earning its place.
- Schedule three to five occurrences only.
- In the last session, vote: keep, change or end.
- If it stays, renew for a month or a quarter. Then vote again.
2. No true north
"Why am I here? Why couldn't this have been an email?" Tie every meeting to your mission, vision or target.
Find your true north
Can't write the sentence? That's your answer.
3. No decisions
Meetings are for deciding how to allocate resources and manage risk. Everything else can be an email.
Ask of every agenda item: does this change who does what, what we spend, or what could go wrong?
Agenda triage
Take the last agenda from the meeting you run. Mark each item D (a decision about resources or risk) or U (an update). For every U, write where it might go instead: email, video, channel or tracker.
| Agenda item | D or U | If U, where it goes |
|---|---|---|
4. No exclusivity
Try the 3 x 3: three people, three questions. Be exclusive about who's in the room and generous about who gets the notes.
Curate the list
Review the invite list for the meeting you run. Mark each person D (decides), E (executes) or K (needs to know). D and E get the invite. Consider whether K gets the notes.
| Name | D, E or K | Invite or notes? |
|---|---|---|
Make over one invite
Use the same meeting. Rewrite its top three agenda items as questions, and name the contribution you want from each attendee.
Example: "Q3 budget" becomes "Do we move $40K from events to digital before Q3 closes?"
5. No preparation
Amazon replaces slides with six-page memos read in silence at the start of the meeting. Borrow the discipline, not the format: a one-page memo, sent ahead.
The first three lines of your memo
If line one is hard to write, ask whether the meeting needs to happen.
For hosts
Your meetings are part of your personal brand. Use this for the next meeting you run.
Before: prepare them
☐Why they're invited
☐What you need from them
☐What to read ahead, and how long it takes
At the start: open with the value proposition
☐What we'll get from this time
☐Why it matters to the bigger goal
At the end: a consistent close
☐What we decided
☐Who owns what, by when
☐What came up, and where it goes
For participants
Two questions do most of the work: "What do you need from me?" and "How can I prepare?"
Pick your move
Your Monday plan
What does one meeting cost?
Pick a recurring meeting and fill in the four numbers. Weekly meetings run about 42 times a year once you take out holidays and time off.
Add the number of people to see the cost.
Sunset clause script
"I'd like to try something with this meeting. Let's schedule it for the next three to five sessions, then take three minutes in the last one to decide together: keep it, change it or end it."
Invite template
Subject: [The decision we'll make] · [length] min We're meeting to decide: [question] It matters because: [the goal it serves] Why you're invited: [the contribution I need from you] Before we meet, read: [link] ([X] minutes) Agenda, as questions: 1. [Question] 2. [Question] 3. [Question]
Your next step
Join the Portico Community Workspace to find this playbook, the session summary and more Portico content.
Want help making over your team's meetings or have other questions about how to help your team communicate? Book a consult with Portico.
Contact Portico: [email protected]
Notes
Keep your answers. They save in this browser as you type. Print or save a copy to take them with you.
Portico Live: Meeting Makeovers · PorticoPR.us · [email protected]