Meetings should not be held to give updates — this can be done asynchronously. Instead, meetings should have a shared agenda of decisions that need to be made, collectively acquired prior to the meeting, so that there is a clear success metric for whether the meeting is done or needs to be extended. There is an inverse relationship between the number of people in a meeting and the effectiveness of the outcome.
This primarily extends to startup environments where speed is essential over accuracy — and ONLY when paying costs that are reversible within one month.
There are two ends of the operating spectrum: benevolent dictator, and servitude leadership. Here lies a gradient and different situations call for different operating modes. When it comes to startups where speed is essential, collecting the opinions of EVERYONE in a rote process reminiscent of a big company, is not ideal. This is a slow killer. It sounds ideal because it is utilitarian, that everyone should be involved in the decision-making process, but this I believe to be false.
There are times where you can collectively meet to gather perspectives from the team, but there needs to be a single decision maker who makes the decision clearly and definitively. Yes, value your team, and this may sound harsh but some colleagues’ opinions are just not as valuable as others in particular moments for particular cases. Aiming to be inclusive for its own sake will introduce unnecessary drag that wastes time and money.
Unless you operate with economy, especially in a startup environment, you’ll kill the inner fire the company may have if you include everyone on every decision. My hypothesis is: meetings with more than five people are more often than not, useless. I would double down on this if the meeting is set up as a recurring sync for its own sake.
Meetings should not be held to give updates — this can be done asynchronously. Instead, meetings should have a shared agenda of decisions that need to be made, collectively acquired prior to the meeting, so that there is a clear success metric for whether the meeting is done or needs to be extended. There is an inverse relationship between the number of people in a meeting and the effectiveness of the outcome.
Keep this in mind next time you run or attend a meeting. Pretend this company is bootstrapped by your own funds, is this how you would expect the business to operate?