Cameron Herold: Run Smart Meetings That Actually Scale Your Business

Executive overview

Cameron Herold, former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK and author of Meetings Suck, argues that bad meetings are a leadership failure, not an inevitable corporate tax. The core problem is simple: companies deploy meetings without ever training anyone — leaders or attendees — on how to run them or show up for them.

Most meetings fail because no one has defined the purpose, circulated an agenda, or agreed on what kind of conversation is happening.

Fixing meetings is not a one-time overhaul; it is a phased, intentional build — starting with the right rhythms, layering in structure, and iterating until each format becomes a flywheel. When meetings work, they are one of the fastest levers for scaling a high-growth company.

Why meetings fail

• Nobody trains managers or employees how to run or attend meetings
• Meetings are booked without a stated purpose, outcomes, or agenda
• Senior people speak first, crowding out lower-level thinking
• Attendees are invited by default rather than by necessity
• No one plays moderator, so discussions drift and time is wasted
• Meeting formats are abandoned after one bad week instead of iterated

The agenda is the contract

• No agenda, no attendance — the invite must include purpose, outcomes, and timed items
• State a maximum of three outcomes so the meeting has a clear finish line
• Agenda signals who is actually needed; wrong attendees can opt out early
• Label each agenda item with its communication style: info share, creative discussion, or consensus decision
• Info share means listen only — no debate, no decisions in that slot
• Finishing five minutes early is a design goal, not a lucky accident

Meeting rhythms and sequencing

• Most companies lack annual and quarterly strategy meetings entirely — this is the first gap to close
• Recommended layering order: annual planning → quarterly reviews → weekly leadership → one-on-ones → daily huddle → finance and strategy sessions
• Block every recurring meeting in all employees' calendars years in advance so work is planned around the meetings, not the reverse
• Set a two-to-five-minute calendar alert before each meeting so people arrive on time
• Introduce one new meeting format at a time; go deep until it works before adding the next
• Without intentional scheduling, companies default to roughly 7% annual growth

The daily huddle: a case study in iteration

• Huddle is a stand-up, seven-minute meeting — sitting down and pouring tea is not a huddle
• Early resistance is normal; the 1-800-GOT-JUNK team called it stupid and dorky for the first few weeks
• Leaders had to seed good news daily, asking specific people to bring positive updates
• Once the flywheel started, the company ran daily huddle for 19+ consecutive years
• As headcount grows past 20–50, switch from everyone speaking to one business area updating per day
• Thoughtful iteration on a meeting format is as important as iteration on your product

Who speaks, when, and why it matters

• The most senior person in the room should speak last; the CEO speaks after everyone else
• When leaders hold back, they discover the group already holds most of the good ideas
• Post-it Note exercises give the most junior or newest employees the first voice
• CEOs who dominate airtime stunt the skills ladder and the confidence ladder of every person below them
• Both ladders must rise together: higher confidence enables skill growth; better skills build confidence
• Moderator role is distinct from leader role — someone must own agenda adherence and time-keeping
• Only invite people who will actively contribute; if they won't speak, let them keep working

Three communication styles that cover every meeting moment

• Info share: one-way broadcast — just listen, no discussion
• Creative discussion: brainstorming, Post-it Notes, mind-mapping, no bad ideas on the wall
• Consensus decision: debate is welcome, but everyone leaves the room having made a decision and agreed to stop re-litigating it outside
• Labelling each agenda item by type prevents creative discussions from being hijacked by premature decisions, and stops info shares from turning into debates
• Planning is not a fourth type — it is creative discussion plus consensus combined

The entrepreneur's meeting problem

• Entrepreneurs understand they need dashboards and systems but rarely know how to implement them, so they blame the system when it fails
• Ideas must be captured in a decision-filter document and voted on by the team monthly or quarterly — green light (start now), yellow (not yet), red (kill it)
• Without a capture system, CEOs delegate half-formed ideas verbally; employees chase them; the CEO moves on; nothing gets done
• The COO or second-in-command is the person who operationalises the entrepreneur's vision — invest in that role through peer networks like the COO Alliance
• Companies need to restructure how they operate at each size inflection: 1 → 3 → 10 → 30 → 100 → 300 → 1,000 employees
• The org chart is most useful viewed upside down: CEO at the bottom supporting VPs, who support managers, who support employees, who serve customers

Building meeting discipline across the organisation

• Treat meetings as a skill domain: dedicate one quarter to training everyone on them
• Month 1: everyone reads Meetings Suck and does a five-minute book report
• Month 2: watch two curated videos on effective meetings and discuss what landed
• Month 3: bring in a facilitator for a half-day workshop
• The same phased approach works for any business skill — interviewing, dashboards, hiring
• Employees will "shine on" (BOHECA — Bend Over, Here It Comes Again) any new system the CEO introduces if it is not followed through consistently for a full quarter
• Introspective leaders who blame themselves first — not the market or the team — are the ones who actually fix broken systems

Cameron Herold's resources

• Book: Meetings Suck — covers how to run meetings, how to attend them, and what meeting rhythms scale a company
• COO Alliance (cooalliance.com): peer network for second-in-commands; members range from $5M to $1.7B revenue companies including AARP
• CameronHerold.com: books, speaking, and coaching
• Scaling Up framework (scalingcoach.com): the operating system within which these meeting rhythms live