The Sublime Meeting Template
Download the Sublime Meeting Template here
Meetings: the cause and solution to all of work’s problems.
In the very early days of a startup, when the team is very small, regular formal meetings can be unnecessary as you’re already in constant contact and communication.
However, as the team begins to grow, meetings become necessary for decision-making and aligning work across the company, from engineering to marketing. Meetings help make sure everyone is seen, heard, and accountable.
And meetings can be total time wasters.
To help make your meetings more productive, make sure:
You have the right attendees: don’t hold a meeting if all the key stakeholders won’t be there. It just means you’ll have to repeat the same meeting again. Sometimes large meetings are inevitable, but try to keep it to 8 or fewer like the Amazon 2-pizza rule.
You do your pre-work ahead of time: Send an agenda and reading materials ahead of time. If you need to, budget time in the meeting for everyone to review the pre-work.
You have a tight agenda with outcomes: No meeting should happen without an agenda, even if just loosely defined. Everyone should know why they’re there and the outcomes expected from the meeting. Use timers to keep the flow of the meeting going and don’t get bogged down solutioning or going down rabbit holes–you can always make an action item to follow-up after the meeting.
You capture the meeting’s productive output: Gone are the days of tedious note-taking—more tools than ever are out there that can capture your transcript and auto-summarize the important pieces of your conversation.
You assign action items: The last few minutes of the meeting should have the meeting leader assign work to everyone with deliverables and due dates.
You follow-up: After the meeting, follow-up with the attendees with the meeting summary, notes captured, and the next steps and action items to keep everyone on the same page and accountable.
To help meetings drive your company forward instead of slowing it down, check out the Sublime Meeting Template.
Make a copy of this template and tailor it to your organization’s needs. By sharing a template with your team, you can encourage them to begin making their meetings better as well.
