Meeting Charter

The calendar is the most honest document in any organisation. Not the strategy deck, not the values poster, not the all-hands presentation about what the company stands for. The calendar. What people actually do with their time — who gets it, in what increments, at whose convenience — is where stated priorities meet revealed ones, and the gap is usually instructive.

Most calendars are not a record of deliberate choices. They are a record of defaults. The standing meeting nobody has questioned. The invitation accepted because declining feels rude. The hour-long block where thirty minutes would have been enough, because the software offered an hour as the first option and nobody changed it. We have handed the architecture of our working days to a combination of social awkwardness and dropdown menus.

These ten principles are an attempt to take it back.

01. Change your default to no

The question isn't whether this meeting is useful. It's whether it's more useful than the uninterrupted time it replaces.

02. Write the memo instead

A well-written memo often eliminates the meeting entirely.

03. No agenda, no meeting

An invitation without an agenda is a request to give up your time with no indication of why. Decline it. One sentence stating the purpose and the decision required is enough. If you can't write that sentence, you're not ready.

04. Share it before, not at the start

Send materials in advance. People arrive with their thinking done. The meeting starts at discussion, not context. Reading belongs before the meeting, not inside it.

05. Default to async

Ask whether the job can be done without a meeting. A shared document. A recorded message. A chat thread with a deadline. Real-time conversation is one tool among several — not the automatic choice. Reserve the meeting for what only a meeting can do.

06. Invite fewer people

If someone doesn't need to speak, they don't need to attend. Broad invitations produce an audience, not a meeting. Invite only the people essential to the outcome. Tell everyone else what was decided.

07. Start on time. End early.

A late start rewards the tardy and penalises the punctual. Starting on time is the minimum. Ending early is the standard — the clearest signal that you respect the room more than the block you booked.

08. Be present or don't come

A meeting attended while clearing emails is not a meeting. It signals to everyone in the room that their time isn't worth your full attention. If you can't give it, decline it. If you're running a meeting people clearly aren't paying attention to, that's the real agenda item.

09. Ask before you record

People speak differently when they know they're being recorded. Important things go unsaid. Ask. Get consent. The meeting ends. The AI doesn't.

10. Leave with action or don't bother

What was decided. Who owns it. By when. If you can't answer all three, the meeting isn't over.

---

Meetings are where culture becomes visible. How you run them says more about what you value than any stated values ever will.