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Run A Useful Meeting

Run meetings that produce decisions instead of updates — state the decision up front, invite only who is needed, and end with owners and dates. Use when running a meeting, setting an agenda, or fixing a recurring meeting nobody wants.

---
name: run-a-useful-meeting
category: productivity
description: >-
  Run meetings that produce decisions instead of updates — state the decision up
  front, invite only who is needed, and end with owners and dates. Use when
  running a meeting, setting an agenda, or fixing a recurring meeting nobody
  wants.
---

# Run a Useful Meeting

A meeting costs the sum of everyone's time, and that cost is invisible because
it never appears on a budget. Eight people for an hour is a working day, spent.

Most meetings fail before they start, because nobody decided what the meeting is
*for*.

## Ask whether it should exist

Meetings are good at exactly three things:

1. **Deciding** something that needs several perspectives in real time.
2. **Resolving** a disagreement that keeps bouncing in text.
3. **Building alignment or trust** where tone matters.

Everything else — status, information sharing, "syncing" — is a document. A
document is faster to consume, searchable later, and does not require nine
people to be free simultaneously.

If you cannot say which of the three this is, cancel it and write it up.

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