Running Effective Meetings

"People often won’t listen to you until they feel that you’ve fully heard them. When people don’t think you deeply understand their POV, they often become obsessed with repeating their points more forcefully instead of hearing yours."

"Whenever you’re on a call, make sure that anything that’s important gets written down. Options that were discussed, decisions that were made and next steps, plus who is going to do them. Go even further for your recurring meetings and have a single document that incorporates an agenda and structured meeting notes of what was discussed each time."

"Pay attention to people around you that are good at shipping — how do they run meetings, how do they address issues as they arise, what systems do they use to keep their team aligned?"

"Our PM team has a section carved out for “what feels hard [harder than it should be]?” The purpose of this section is to discuss sticking points up and down the stack: troubleshooting comms with Team X; doing a teardown of a PRD that has raised unexpected questions and gotten “stuck”; trying on versions of a Vision/Strategy."

"Don’t do this meeting just to do it. Make certain that adding (or continuing this meeting) is consistently worth everyone’s time. What problem are you trying to solve?"

"I’d suggest one to two times a month. The bigger the team, the less frequent. A weekly PM team meeting becomes redundant with your 1:1’s."

"Put the agenda for each meeting into a shared Google doc (or whatever document platform you prefer), and link to it in the invite. As new items come up throughout the week, add to this doc."

"PM team meetings tend to get super serious. Find ways to add a bit of joy and lightheartedness to the meetings."

"As you take notes, it silently transcribes everything said in the background. Once the meeting is complete, Granola enhances your notes, summarizing what everyone said, and makes it easy to share (and search) what was said."

"Instead of adding action items from meetings to a to-do list, do the action items *live in the meeting*. With everyone watching. While screensharing."

"Use a Loom (or a Slack video clip) when the reason for a meeting is to communicate a nuanced, high-bandwidth concept. Treat your audience like, well, an audience; be intentional about converting them to view and click."

"Include the goal of the meeting in your invite, ideally along with an agenda. If you attend a meeting that doesn’t feel productive, call it out. Invite as few people as possible. Leave with clear action items."

"Group Office Hours key question: “What are your goals for the next two weeks and what were your goals for the last two weeks? Did you hit the goals? If not, what came in the way of hitting the goals?”"