Attending a great meeting should be like seeing a great movie in the theatre for the first time. You should leave the room talking about it, you should reference it later in the week as you work on your follow-ups from it, you should pontificate over what worked and what didn’t and what you personally would do differently, and most importantly of all, you should be able to relate it cleanly, succinctly to anyone who didn’t attend.
How many times have you left a meeting and someone asked you in an hour or the next day what was about or what you did in it?
“We talked about some stuff? I think we all left with some action items.”
Or…
“It started off with us all getting on the same page with the problem, and by all, I mean we ripped it down to its barebones because no one was on the same page. Then we determined who had a stake in the meeting, what needed to be done, and why, and lastly we came up with a plan that oddly enough did not include giving everyone action items to do, only those that truly needed to do actions. But the best part of all, not everyone is invited to the next meeting, only those impacted. It was amazing”
I have said the former in many statements (probably indicative of my not needing to be there). I have said the latter about only a handful of meetings that I can vividly…
