Most meetings waste time because they lack intentional design. Learn how to plan with purpose by starting with empathy, clarifying success, creating a realistic flow, and using a facilitator guide.

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 Sources of Influence Power

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Here’s a quick reference that lists the sources of influence power, in order of their relevance and effectiveness.

We’ve designed breakouts for sales kickoffs, leadership off-sites, and enterprise-wide strategy rollouts—and we’ve seen what works (and what doesn’t). This guide shares the exact principles we use to make sessions that are engaging, purpose-driven, and actually move people.

ResourcesStephanie JuddSeptember 30, 2025meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, tool, conference, breakouts, breakout, engagement, sko, sales kickoff, salesComment

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…

Design Breakouts That Actually Break Through

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Breakouts are where your attendees explore, discuss, and internalize the message you most want them to remember. They’re where concepts are made real and tangible. But too often, they turn into just another slide-driven presentation.

We’ve designed breakouts for sales kickoffs, leadership off-sites, and enterprise-wide strategy rollouts—and we’ve seen what works (and what doesn’t). This guide shares the exact principles we use to make sessions that are engaging, purpose-driven, and actually move people.

Maximize Your Draft Agenda

Around this time of year, people are planning large-scale and high-stakes gatherings, and they want to make sure the time and money invested in these events are well spent. Nine times out of ten, that means folks are putting pen to paper and coming up with an agenda. If you’re in the early stages of doing just that, here are some tips to make sure your agenda (and the resulting gathering) are designed with outcomes, engagement and a thoughtful flow in mind.

ArticleKara DavidsonNovember 12, 2024events, agenda, agenda template, meetings, meeting design, facilitationComment

Rethinking the Status Update Meeting

All too often, weekly (or monthly) status updates end up being a verbal report-out by team members to the team lead. The team members feel like the time is wasted and the information could have been better communicated in an email. The team leader struggles to get anyone to participate outside of their own report. Now that many of these calls are happening in the virtual space, it’s no wonder that everyone on these calls is multitasking and disengaged.

But what can you do? As a manager or project lead, you need to get updates from the team to make sure all the work streams are on track. How can you rethink—and hopefully reinvigorate—the status update meeting?

ArticleStephanie JuddApril 15, 2024meetings, meeting design, check-ins, manager check-ins, conversations, status updateComment

Workshop Design Rules of Thumb

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You’re a content expert who been asked to teach what you know. Challenge yourself to reach beyond the typical “lecture style” approach to learning—it’s not that effective anyway—and build out an interactive and engaging workshop instead. Here are some basic rules of thumb to keep in mind as you create your learning experience.

ResourcesStephanie JuddJuly 20, 2023meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, toolComment

Craft Powerful Micro-Stories for Your Presentation

TOOL

To help our clients embed stories into their presentations, we typically encourage them to take an intentional look at their story ideas through the lens of the building blocks of the story. If you’d like to do the same, use this tool to get started.

ResourcesStephanie JuddJune 29, 2023meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, toolComment

Marked Up Agenda Resource

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In our work helping clients design their strategy retreats, we've come across plenty of draft agendas. Some are better than others. Download this file for two draft agendas that we've marked up with comments on their strengths and opportunities.

ResourcesStephanie JuddApril 4, 2023meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, toolComment

Ramp Up the Asks: How to Warm Up Attendees for High Quality Engagement

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Truly engaging your audience takes a lot more effort and planning and, as a result, is often neglected. Ramp up the “asks” for your audience over the course of the meeting. Check out this one-page reference on how to Ramp Up The Asks.

ResourcesStephanie JuddApril 4, 2023meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, toolComment

Materials for Meeting Success

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Turn off the slide deck and make your materials physical instead. Check out this one-page reference of Materials for Meeting Success.

ResourcesStephanie JuddApril 4, 2023meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, toolComment

Ground Rules for Success

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The best medicine is always and forever will be prevention, and that is something you can do pretty effectively by establishing thoughtful ground rules at the outset of the meeting. Check out this one-page reference with some high-quality ground rules you may consider adapting and/or adopting for yourself.

ResourcesStephanie JuddApril 4, 2023meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, toolComment

How to Gather Input from a Working Group

When organizing a working group meeting, you may decide that part of the reason for gathering is to collect input and expertise from your members. Remember that giving your participants something to DO is a powerful way to engage them and give them purpose, so don’t hold back. Then, focus on giving your conversation structure so that you can manage the loud voices and democratize the input.

ArticleStephanie JuddNovember 14, 2022Meetings, meeting design, working group, leadershipComment

Clarifying Success for Your Working Group Meeting (with Downloadable Tool)

TOOL

Because working groups are often established to work through aspirational and shifting goals, and because participants are usually loosely organized, it’s critical that participants understand why they’re meeting, what they are expected to contribute, and what they can expect in return. Although you may already have a cursory idea of agenda topics for meetings, getting clear on your “why” will take your meeting from the typical boring event to a powerful gathering with better outcomes.

ArticleKara DavidsonOctober 31, 2022agenda template, agenda, meeting design, meeting design and facilitation, presentation, planningComment

Designing a Meeting for a Working Group

Working groups are a particularly challenging group to organize and facilitate. Members typically participate in a working group as volunteers, or as an “add on” to their day-to-day jobs. They’re usually made up of members who are more experienced and senior than the person charged with spearheading the group, and the lack of power structure makes accountability to the group a bit thin.

ArticleStephanie JuddOctober 17, 2022Meetings, meeting design, working group, leadershipComment

Define Success for your Strategy Retreat: KNOW, FEEL, and DO Statements

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This reference offers a few examples of KNOW, FEEL, and DO statements that we worked through with our clients. Compare the “before” and “after” states and see our markup.

ResourcesStephanie JuddOctober 6, 2022meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, toolComment

Tool: Set Your Presentation or Meeting Up for Success

TOOL

This Google Sheets template will provide you with a framework to define success for your meeting or presentation. One tab offers a structure for you to think through a single meeting. Another tab offers a template for thinking through a multi-session gathering or retreat.

ResourcesStephanie JuddOctober 5, 2022meeting design and facilitation, meeting design, toolComment

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.