1. Number: only attend meetings with a pre-agreed outcome & predefined value
2. Agenda : drastically remove anything not crucial for the WHOLE team
3. Priorities : Agree the top-3 items and allocate to them 80% of time
4. Flags: for meeting types: information sharing, team creation, decision-making. Minimize the % of the 1st, maximize the 2nd, time-restrict the 3rd.
5. Challenge-counter: count the times when proposals/decisions are challenged. Worry if there are too few or always the same challenges.
6. Time-outs: use them to gain awareness and reflect on dynamics, feelings, attention or reactions.
7. The ‘1-3-10 rule’: once every 3 regular meetings spend 10′ discussing ‘what creates value in your meetings & what doesn’t’.
8. Closure: for any subject close with :’What are the key learnings?’, ‘What are we going to do about them?’
9. Empty chairs: have 2-3 empty chairs representing customers, suppliers, other key stakeholders. At given points imagine what they would say.
10. ‘Elephants in the room’ : when you detect issues like unresolved relationships, major strategic or priority misalignments etc, pause the meeting, share the observation and agree how teams deals with the issue.
