Productive Business Meetings

Here are some suggestions for making business meetings more productive, efficient and effective.

Based on readers’ feedback, I have split this article into the following separate blog posts.

• Use these Posted Signs for Productive Meetings in your meeting rooms and offices
• Consider using this template for requesting a meeting
• Consider using this format for your weekly staff meetings and this one for your weekly 1:1 meetings with direct reports, stakeholders, and bosses.
• Sample templates for replying to meeting requests & polite ways to decline meeting invites and one for declining a meeting that you have previously accepted.
• Suggestions for when to have and when not to schedule meetings
• Leave some time to breathe. Use the updated version of the 50/25 Meeting Format
• Guidelines for using laptops, smartphones, and other communications devices in meetings
• Activities, Outputs, and Outcomes — A framework for your job — Understand the difference between these three to ensure your meetings result in the change (outcomes) you desire.
• A Responsible Recipe for the Fewest Possible Meetings authored by my friend and colleague Jon Berger.

(Updated: 2023 September 17)