Running the Operating Cadence
Running Meetings That Produce Decisions
Most meetings fail before they start. How a Chief of Staff structures agendas, drives to a decision, and captures owners and dates every time.
Decide what the meeting is for
Every agenda item should be labeled as one of three types: decide, discuss, or inform. Inform items belong in the pre-read. Discuss items need a question to answer. Decide items need options, a recommendation, and a named decision-maker before the meeting starts.
The facilitation moves that matter
A Chief of Staff facilitating a leadership meeting has a small set of high-leverage moves.
- Open with the decisions needed today, so the room knows what done looks like.
- Timebox debate and call the question: restate the options and ask the decision-maker to choose or explicitly defer with a date.
- Park tangents visibly in a follow-up list rather than letting them consume the agenda.
- Close the last five minutes by reading back every decision, owner, and due date.
After the meeting
Send a same-day summary: decisions made, actions with owners and dates, and items deferred. Then track the actions to completion; the follow-up is where most organizations leak execution, and it is squarely the CoS's job to plug it.