Our Meeting Manifesto: Reclaiming the Power of Gathering at Work

Meetings are the most expensive way organizations spend time together. When a meeting fails, few blame leadership or facilitation. Why? Facilitation is invisible when it works and ignored when it doesn’t. Which means leaders rarely improve at it, and teams keep bleeding time, energy, and morale. But a well-run meeting is one of the highest-leverage spends a leader can make. One well-facilitated strategy session can save months of misalignment, recouping its cost in weeks, if not days.

Read on for our meeting manifesto, to understand how we see meetings and the best ways to maximize their power.

The Surprising Challenge of a Short Talk: Why less time means more pressure—and how to rise to the occasion.

The world’s attention is getting shorter—especially when it comes to talks. From TED and DisruptHR to board meetings and team stand-ups, speaking formats are shrinking. Five to ten minutes is quickly becoming the new standard. And while that may sound like a relief to anyone who dreads long presentations, short talks are surprisingly difficult to get right.

In fact, we’d argue they’re harder. A lot harder.

Here’s why, and what to do about it…

Attack Your Meeting Problem With a Set of Questions

Most organizations don’t have a meeting problem so much as they have a thinking-about-meetings problem.

Too many meetings are:

Scheduled by default (“We always meet on Tuesdays.”)
Held without a clear purpose or plan
Dominated by a few voices while others check email
Drifting aimlessly without resolution or follow-up

And that’s if people show up in the first place.

In our work with leaders across industries, we’ve seen this over and over: intelligent, well-intentioned people wasting hours in meetings that feel more like performance art than productivity. It's not that they don’t care. It’s that no one ever taught them how to design and facilitate a great meeting.

But don’t worry! There is a solution to this madness. Here’s what you can do…

Navigating Impostor Syndrome: Your Biggest Leadership Hurdle

A key hurdle for leaders stepping into their own leadership is their personal belief that they’re not ready. This article explores Impostor Syndrome, who it affects, and how to combat it effectively: check in with yourself, reframe your thinking, seek outside perspectives, and take a small step.

It’s Time to Update Your Meeting Agenda

Every month we host an Ask Me Anything forum where people bring their burning questions about meeting design or facilitation. More often than not, the questions we get can be summed up as, “Why is the meeting so boring? I feel like I’m pulling teeth trying to get people to engage. It just feels like a waste of time.” If you’re in a position where it feels like everything is bad about one of your critical business meetings, start by tackling the agenda.