Stop meeting about the meeting

There is a version of busy that looks like progress and isn't.

It shows up as updates. Status decks. Pre-reads for the pre-read. A meeting on Tuesday to get ready for the meeting on Thursday. Somewhere along the way, the update stopped being a window into the work and became the work itself.

I have been there. Whole afternoons spent confirming what everyone already knew, packaged in slides that barely get a glance. The teams that did this best were not always the teams moving the business. They were the teams that had learned how to present.

That is the hard part. When updates become the skill, people optimize for a good update instead of a good result. The presentation gets a good polish and we all become great storytellers.

An update meeting only needs to do three things.

One. Reflect and celebrate, because the number is green. If something is working, name it, and give the people behind it credit out loud. It builds your culture. It tells everyone what good looks like.

Two. If the number is not where it needs to be, speak to what you are doing about it. Not why it happened. Not who owned it. What is the next move, and when. The conversation lives in the future, not the autopsy.

Three. Ask where you need help from other functions. Most things that are stuck are stuck between two teams, not inside one. The meeting is the one place to surface that and fix it in the room.

Everything else belongs in an email, at minimum.

That is the whole discipline. Green numbers get celebrated. Red numbers get a plan. Blocked work gets unblocked across functions. No status theater. No performance reviews disguised as a standup.

What you get back is time, and a different kind of room. People stop preparing to look good and start showing up to think. The operator who never had a slick deck finally gets heard. And you find out what is actually true about the business a lot faster.

Try this in your next leadership meeting. Cut the status portion entirely. Send the numbers in advance and assume people read them. Then run the agenda on those three questions and nothing else. The first time will feel short. That is the point.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah