The essence of a meeting is a business model that exchanges time for conclusions. If a meeting doesn't produce valuable conclusions, then it's wasting everyone's time.

Teams need to focus on continually generating and recording conclusions throughout the discussion.

Recommended types of conclusions include:

• Next Action: A one-time action by an individual. Especially in meetings, it's essential to have a deadline for easier tracking afterward.
• Rules: Agreements or consensus reached by the team.
• Decisions: Proposals for the next steps.
• Key Points: Opinions, summaries, or critical information that needs to be emphasized and recorded.

As the meeting facilitator, you can:

• After the end of any topic, constantly remind participants, "Do you have any conclusions or outputs to record?" Encourage everyone to write their conclusions in the [Outcome Area] of each topic card.

  • Outcome Area

  

• Based on the content of the discussion, suggest potential outcomes they might arrive at and differentiate the types of outcomes.

  • Available outcome types