Last week, I stumbled on an article in Forbes called, “The Four-Question Meeting: You Can’t Be Brilliant Alone.” The author cited the extraordinary cost of meetings to an organization (average per week for a 100-person company = ~$250,000) and made the case for running every potential gathering through the following filter:
- What is the purpose — decision, information sharing or brainstorming?
- What is the issue…in five words or less?
- Who has already weighed in and what did they have to say about it?
- What will surprise me in this meeting?
While I like that structure, I think the number of questions is still too long!
For our weekly standups, we’ve kept it even more simple:
- Where did you experience success?
- Where do you have roadblocks that we can help remove?
That’s it. We round the circle and let everyone take a shot at both questions. Sometimes there are questions or suggestions for the person reporting out, but typically this process keeps us focused and finds us finished with our time together in 30 minutes or less.
What do you think? Is two too few? Or do you say “bring on the brevity!”?
If you experiment with this idea, please let us know.
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