Successful Meetings
A meeting is already at risk when no one has named the decision or output it must produce. This playbook uses a packet, a follow-up note, and an audit to make that output visible.
Andy Grove described meetings as a medium for managerial work. Treat them as operating mechanisms: give each recurring meeting an owner, an objective, and a written output. Without those fields, the meeting consumes time without creating a decision or durable record.
The playbook is three artifacts. The Meeting Packet decides whether the meeting should exist, names the outcome, gives every attendee a role, and sets the shortest timebox that can produce the outcome. The Follow-Up Note turns the meeting into decisions and owned actions inside 24 hours. The Meeting Audit scores recurring meetings against four tenets, returns a verdict for each one, and shows the cost in person-hours.
If a meeting produces no decision, action, learning, or relationship outcome, replace it with a document or stop running it.
Agenda: [Meeting name] Objective: [One sentence: the decision or outcome this meeting exists to produce] Owner: [Name] Type: [Process-oriented | Mission-oriented] Date and time: [Date, start to end, timezone] Attendees: - [Name] (Owner) - [Name] (Decider) - [Name] (Contributor: what input they bring) Informed, gets the notes: [Names] Materials, shared in advance: [Docs, decks, dashboards] Send agenda and materials by: [At least 24 hours before start] Items: 1. [Item] ([N] min) [What done looks like for this item] Final 5 min: decisions, owners, dates Discussion questions: - [3 to 5 questions matched to the meeting's job]
[Meeting name] follow-up, [date] [If any: GAPS TO RESOLVE BEFORE SENDING: action 2 needs an owner] Decisions: - We will [decision, stated as a commitment, not a topic] Summary: [Three sentences maximum. What was worked, what changed, what remains open.] Action items: - [Action]. Owner: [name]. Due: [date]. Learnings: - [Anything learned that changes how the team works going forward]
FOUR TENETS, scored 0 to 2 each, max 8 - Owned and purposeful: an owner, an objective, an agenda shipped in advance - Right sized: attendee count matches the outcome, no audience members - Participatory: people contribute and debate, not a status readout - Decisive: ends in decisions and owned actions, prior actions checked VERDICT: Keep (7 to 8) | Fix (5 to 6) | Shrink | Make async | Kill (0 to 3) RECOVERY: [X] person-hours per week returned across [N] meetings
ROLLOUT, in order 1. Introduce the format, using a recent real meeting as the before picture. 2. Change one thing: the agenda with an objective, shipped 24 hours ahead. 3. Model it in the meetings you own. 4. Rotate ownership. Coach facilitation privately. 5. Gather feedback and adjust where the format grinds. 6. Recognize a tight meeting in public so the team knows which behavior to repeat.
successful-meetings/
├── SKILL.md ← invocation rules + the three modes
├── meta.yaml ← version, sources, test prompts, changelog
├── LICENSE.md ← MIT
├── assets/
│ ├── agenda-template.md ← the Meeting Packet scaffold
│ ├── audit-scorecard.md ← four tenets, scored 0 to 2
│ └── follow-up-template.md ← decisions, actions, owners, dates
└── references/
├── culture-rollout.md ← the six-step adoption plan
├── meeting-types.md ← process vs mission, and prep depth
├── pitfalls.md ← failure modes and their counters
└── question-bank.md ← Who, What, Where, When, Why, How"Use the successful-meetings skill to prep this meeting and write the agenda."