The word meeting isn’t specific enough. There’s a taxonomy of meetings, and each should be approached differently 1:1s, we know how these work Update meeting

The word meeting isn’t specific enough. There’s a taxonomy of meetings, and each should be approached differently 1:1s, we know how these work Update meeting (Gathering everyone in a room and give updates) - eliminate these, this should not be a meeting. Should be recorded and posted online for people to watch at their leisure, and made available in an archive. If content is must-see (safety announcements, etc.), track viewership and link to job performance. Team planning meetings - do as much upfront beforehand as possible (individual brainstorming, backlog preparation etc) to keep it as short as possible, and be as clear as possible on scope so it can end as soon as possible. Team decision meetings & strategy meetings - probably the only meetings that need lots of people as many stakeholders will improve a decision. But you need a decision process and it takes focus from everyone not to get distracted or stuck on minor points. You can however, only have one representative of each area to be the voice, which keeps it small We call all these meetings because English doesn’t give us tools to discuss the distinctions and it’s been limiting the discussion since way before Covid. The latter two types absolutely need agendas. That will keep them on the rails. If a meeting is doing the work of two (or more!) of these categories it’s sub-optimal because it requires lots of attendees who only need to be there for one of the types of meeting. Those folks sit exhausted & frustrated for the rest. You’d be better to split it out to multiple meetings with shorter agendas and a more focused group of attendees.