How to run effective meetings using a simple framework

Executive overview

Meetings are universally blamed, but the real problem is that nobody teaches people how to run them. Like any skill — baseball, coding, cooking — meeting facilitation must be learned. Cameron Herold's framework from his book Meetings Suck gives leaders a repeatable structure to eliminate wasted time.

Meetings fail because of poor design, not the format itself.

The core meeting framework

• Every meeting needs a clear purpose: why are we meeting?
• Every meeting needs an agenda: what topics, in what order, for how many minutes?
• Each agenda item should be tagged by communication style: info share, creative discussion, or decision
• No agenda = permission to decline: "no agenda, no attenda"

Time and attendance rules

• Book meetings for half the time you first think to book them — Parkinson's Law fills whatever container you give it
• End every meeting five minutes early so attendees can transition without being late to the next
• Only invite people who will contribute — not those who just need to know the outcome
• Allow people to opt out if the purpose and agenda don't require them; that's resource allocation, not an insult
• Assign a moderator, timekeeper, and parking lot to every meeting

Meeting rhythms by purpose

• A daily huddle (seven minutes, all-company standup) covers good news, key metrics, departmental updates, and blockers
• As companies scale past ~250 employees, huddles stratify by business unit
• Each meeting type has its own style: a strategy meeting runs differently from a business area review, which runs differently from a coaching session
• A meeting is any time two or more people gather — over Zoom, phone, or in person — to move something forward