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The meeting that should have been a decision

Most leadership teams do not lack meetings. They lack a moment in which someone is required to decide. The calendar fills, the notes circulate, and Tuesday looks exactly like the Tuesday before.

The meeting is not the decision

A useful meeting ends with an owner and a date. Anything else is a conversation that borrowed an hour. At Marlow Goods the offsite produced twelve priorities. None of them had a name beside them. The work of the chapter was not a better offsite. It was the unclaimed hour after it.

The meeting was never the decision. The decision was the unclaimed hour after it.

From the first chapter

What we changed on purpose

We cut the list to five. Each priority got an owner who already had a job, not a new program office. The weekly meeting was shortened and forbidden from reopening a decision that had an owner. Advice that cannot survive a Tuesday afternoon is not advice yet.

If this is the shape of your week, the offer is operating cadence. If you want someone else to run the function for you, we are the wrong firm.

Helen Birch Avatar

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2 responses to “The meeting that should have been a decision”

  1. Chris Adelman Avatar
    Chris Adelman

    We tried to skip the owner. The chapter stalled until someone had to answer for Tuesday.

    1. Helen Birch Avatar
      Helen Birch

      That is the whole practice. A decision without an owner is still a meeting.

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