Decide Who Actually Needs to Be in the Room
Added 2026-11-06
Every extra attendee adds a silent cost.
I am organizing this meeting: [purpose, possible attendees, decision to make]. Decide who actually needs to be there: 1) classify each person as deciding, informing, affected, or executing; 2) mark who only needs the material beforehand and not the room; 3) cost each group's time and give a cheaper format — async, first half only, a written brief afterwards; 4) name whose absence would block the decision; 5) write the invitation saying what each attendee must do and prepare; 6) say when to cancel the meeting and write instead.
Site original
Chinese original
How to use
Mixing "affected" with "decides" is how meetings fail to end.
Try tweaking it
- Ask for three columns: conclusion, owner, deadline — ready to paste into a table.
- Let it organise only your notes; do not add decisions that were never made.
What you should get
- Task list with owner, deadline and blocker
- Escalations that need a decision, listed separately
Common mistakes
- Feeding raw notes and letting it fill in decisions that were never made.
- Getting owners without deadlines, so no task can be created.
How to check the output
- Every item has an owner and a date — ready to become a task.
- It does not record decisions that were never made.
Where it works
- Good for: turning verbal discussion into owner, deadline and blocker.
- Watch out: let it organise only the notes you supply — never let it infer decisions that were not made.