I’m a manager so I have lots of meetings. Some of them are interesting, energetic or well structured. When such meetings finished I feel satisfied with the results. I feel that we accomplished something meaningful and we’ll change the world for the better. Let’s call them Meetings Type-A.

But some meetings are awful. They are unstructured, boring and leave the feeling of time wasted. Nobody likes such meetings. We’ll call them Meetings Type-B.

From the last couple of weeks, I started to use a simple rule which helped me to have more Type-A meetings. Here it is:

At least one action, decision or change should be made during the meeting.

Not after the meeting, but during one. Even if the action is the update in the CRM, the decision is not to attend such meetings in the future and the change is something small and might be not directly related to the meeting (but it’s meaningful for you).

Now even I feel that I’m in a Type-B meeting, I’m doing my best to drive some action right during the meeting, make a decision and write it down or initiate some change.