Serve in the Light of Truth

From Tech Disruptive:

1. Preparation – I always go into a 15 minute meeting with bullet points of what is to be discussed. Having done this many times now I know how much can be discussed in 15 minutes and what can be left for another session or in a follow-up discussion.
2. Strict Timings – 15 minutes. That’s it, don’t go over. No exceptions. I’ve literally stop meetings if they go over and say let’s prepare better for next time or plan another session.
3. Follow-up – Pretty much every 15 minute meeting I’ve done has required some sort of follow-up. But this is the beauty of productivity in the 15 minute meeting. You can achieve a lot in 15 minutes, but as with even many 1-hour meetings the main focus of productivity is what happens in the follow-up actions or discussions later.
4. Leave Politics at the door – 15 minute meetings aren’t designed to have any leeway for discussing how to build strategies for projects. They’re designed to make decisions. Often during 1-2 hour meetings I would estimate 75% of the time spent was trying to create a strategy that was needed to circumvent some sort of bureaucracy or political issue.
5. People Need Time to Think – 1-2 hour meetings are inefficient because they don’t let people analytically think about problems. All they do is let people talk. This is bad. People make their best decisions when they can analyze data. Good business is done without emotions, 15 minutes doesn’t allow for any emotions. It’s either X or Y, YES or NO. That’s how decisions are made.