meetings

name	meetings
description	Covers the full meeting lifecycle for engineering managers — produces guidance on whether to schedule a meeting, how to run it well, how to protect team focus time, how to kill recurring waste, and how to evaluate a past meeting from a transcript or description. Use when the user says "too many meetings," "meetings are a waste of time," "how do I run this meeting," "meeting agenda," "meeting culture," "nobody comes prepared," "meetings go nowhere," "how do I decline meetings," "distractions," "focus time," "engineers can't focus," "context switching," "protect engineering time," "review this meeting," or "transcript."
metadata	{"version":"1.1.0"}

Meetings

Before Starting

Check for EM context first. If .agents/em-context.md exists, read it.

If .agents/em-context.md does not exist, ask for a minimal manager profile first and save it before giving detailed advice: role/title, team size, team mission or ownership area, and current challenge or priority.

If a specific person is central to the conversation and .agents/reports/[name].md does not exist, ask for a minimal profile for that person first and save it before giving detailed advice: title/level, tenure, strengths, and current challenge or growth area.

If the conversation reveals durable new context later, update .agents/em-context.md or .agents/reports/[name].md automatically. Save stable facts and patterns, not guesses, transient frustration, or unresolved interpretations.

Response Style

Keep the first answer concise and useful. Do not dump the whole framework unless the user asks for depth.

Default to:

• State the likely diagnosis or recommendation first
• Ask at most 2-3 targeted questions only if the missing context changes the advice
• Give the next concrete action and, when useful, exact wording the manager can use
• Mention the relevant framework briefly, but do not explain every part of it
• Offer a deeper version only after the direct answer

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How to Use This Skill

• Wondering if something should be a meeting → Is This a Meeting?
• Running a specific meeting: who to invite, how to prep, how to facilitate → Running a Good Meeting
• Too many meetings, team can't focus, calendar fragmented → Reducing Meetings
• A recurring meeting nobody can explain → Killing Meetings That Have Outlived Their Purpose
• User shares a transcript or describes how a meeting went → Reviewing a Meeting
• Engineers always distracted, can never get into flow → Why Meetings Are Expensive (then Reducing Meetings)

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Default Response Shape

When helping with meetings, produce a decision and operating plan:

1. Meeting decision: keep, kill, shorten, async, split, or redesign.
2. Purpose: decision, problem-solving, alignment, relationship, or information sharing.
3. Agenda / async alternative: concrete structure or written replacement.
4. Participants: who must attend and who can be informed afterward.
5. Follow-up mechanism: owner, decisions, notes, and review date.

For transcripts or past meetings, diagnose what failed and give a revised version.

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Why Meetings Are Expensive

Your engineers are on a maker's schedule — meaningful work needs half-day blocks, not one-hour slots. A meeting at 11am doesn't cost an hour; it costs the morning, because the block before it is too short to get deep work done. When you schedule a meeting, it's routine for you and expensive for them.

Research on 600K+ pull requests shows engineers are truly productive during two windows: 9–11am and 2–4pm. Scheduling a meeting inside those windows — even a short one — kills the productive block. Put meetings at 8:30, 11:30, 1:00, or 4:00+. The difference is not marginal.

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Is This a Meeting?

Before scheduling, identify what type of meeting this is:

• Problem-solving — the group needs to work through a problem together
• Decision-making — a decision needs to be made and requires the right people present
• Getting buy-in — you've already decided; you need alignment and commitment
• Information sharing — you're communicating something

Information sharing almost never needs a meeting. Record a Loom, send a doc, post in Slack. Reserve synchronous time for things that require real back-and-forth.

Does the decision-maker need to be there? If they can't attend, reschedule. A meeting without the decision-maker that was supposed to produce a decision produces nothing.

More than 7 people in a decision meeting is almost always too many. Every extra person adds social complexity, slows discussion, and often derails focus. People who need to be "in the loop" can get a summary.

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Running a Good Meeting

Prepare. Every meeting needs a written agenda sent in advance — not "catch up," but a specific list of what will be covered and what outcome is expected. For complex topics, send reading material 24–48 hours ahead and ask people to arrive with a position. Meetings where everyone reads the material in the room are preparation failures.

Run it. Start on time — always. Assign a facilitator and a note-taker. When the conversation drifts, name it: "That's important — let's park it and come back." A parking lot keeps the meeting on track without dismissing valid concerns.

Drive to decisions, not discussions. A meeting that ends with "we should think more about this" has failed. End with: a decision made, a next step assigned, or an explicit statement of what information is needed and who will get it.

If you reach the goal in 20 of 60 minutes, end it.

Follow through. Send a written summary within 24 hours: decisions made, action items with owners and deadlines, open questions. Even if the meeting felt obvious, people remember it differently. The written record is the truth.

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Reducing Meetings

Your calendar is the model for your team's calendar. If you're in back-to-back meetings all day, you're signaling that's normal.

• Protect proactive time. Aim for at least 30% of your work week in uninterrupted blocks. When it drops below 20%, you're in reactive mode.
• Batch meetings. Cluster them into fixed windows — mornings, or specific days — to preserve deep work blocks.
• Shorten by default. Use 25 and 50 minutes instead of 30 and 60. The shorter slot forces efficiency; meetings expand to fill their scheduled time.
• Delegate attendance. Some meetings don't need you personally — a report can go and brief you afterward.
• You're allowed to decline. If you're not a decision-maker and not a required input-provider, decline and ask to be looped in via summary.

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Killing Meetings That Have Outlived Their Purpose

Every team has recurring meetings nobody can explain. A standup that adds no value. A sync that's been on the calendar for two years.

Ask regularly: "Why are we still doing this?" If the answer is "because we always have" — that's inertia, not a reason. Processes inherited from a previous manager, a different team size, or a different stage often outlive their usefulness.

A simple habit: once a quarter, list your team's regular rituals and ask for each: what problem does this solve? If nobody can answer, try removing it for one month. Most people will feel relieved.

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Reviewing a Meeting

When the user shares a transcript or describes how a meeting went, evaluate it across five dimensions:

1. Purpose — Was the goal clear before the meeting started? Was it achieved? If the meeting ended without a decision, a commitment, or a clear next step — it failed.

2. Attendance — Were the right people there? Was the decision-maker present? Were there people in the room who only needed a summary?

3. Preparation — Was there an agenda? Did people arrive having read relevant material, or were they reading it in the meeting?

4. Facilitation — Did the conversation stay on track? Were tangents named and parked? Did one person dominate? Did quieter people get airtime?

5. Follow-through — Were decisions recorded? Were action items captured with owners and deadlines — or did the meeting end with vague commitments?

For each dimension, note what happened and one concrete thing to do differently next time. The goal isn't a perfect score — it's identifying the one or two changes that would make the next meeting meaningfully better.

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Dive Deeper

If the user asks where a framework came from, wants to read the original article, or wants more context on any topic in this skill — read references/sources.md for the full list of source articles (with links) and books.

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Related Skills

• managing-urgency — Urgency culture is a common driver of unnecessary meetings and chronic interruptions
• delegation — EMs who don't delegate become a common source of interruptions themselves
• team-health — Meeting cadence and quality show up in team health and engagement
• 1on1s — 1:1s are a specific meeting type with their own format