Better meetings

A healthy marketing calendar is quiet by default and noisy only on purpose. My first agency role taught me the opposite: five-hour meeting blocks, circular discussions, no written actions—then everyone wondered why campaigns slipped. When we introduced a strict meeting hygiene policy, output shot up, stress dropped and clients noticed the difference within a month. Meetings work when they protect focus, surface real debate and end in clear commitments; anything else belongs in Slack threads or dashboards.

Before you click “Accept”, look for a single sentence that states the decision or problem to solve. “Approve Q3 creative concept” passes. “Catch-up” fails. When a request arrives empty, reply with a polite prompt: “Happy to join—could you share the decision we need to reach?” Nine times out of ten the organiser tightens the invite or realises an email will do.

Preparation does more than save minutes; it raises discussion quality. Attendees arrive informed, debate the real issue, and respect that you value their time. Teams that prepare well need fewer meetings overall because decisions stick the first time.

Invite the minimum viable room

Ask why each person is essential. A channel marketer, performance lead and designer can finalise ad creative; adding the CRM admin “just in case” wastes their afternoon. Smaller rooms reach alignment faster and keep salaries focused on growth work—not calendar filler.

Send material twenty-four hours ahead

Attach briefs, dashboards and mock-ups the day before. When my paid-media team began sharing a Looker Studio link ahead of performance calls, live time shifted from “What happened?” to “What do we change?”—a fifteen-minute victory every week.

State ownership and authority

Every meeting needs a final owner. Writing “Decision owner: VP Growth” prevents the stall where everyone nods but no one signs off. In smaller teams the owner might be you; make it explicit so the group knows who pulls the trigger.

Highlight open questions

Add a short “Unanswered” list in the pre-read—missing creative specs, unclear budgets, needed data pulls. Attendees arrive ready to close those gaps instead of discovering them on the call.

Keep sessions short by design

Set default lengths to twenty-five or fifty minutes. The missing five or ten minutes protect bio-breaks and reset attention. Open by repeating the goal; a visible timer reminds everyone the clock is non-negotiable.

Park side topics without losing them

When a tangent appears—“Should we refresh the landing page design?”—capture it in a visible parking-lot note. Return only if time remains; otherwise assign an async owner. This habit saved my lifecycle team two extra meetings per sprint.

Speak in concrete terms

Data beats opinion, mock-ups beat adjectives. Instead of saying “The ad doesn’t feel bold”, show last month’s click-through rates or drop the mock-up beside a competitor’s. Concrete language accelerates decisions and trims polite waffle.

Finish with a verbal recap

Before anyone clicks “Leave”, read the decision, owner and deadline aloud. Ambiguity dies when spoken in front of witnesses.

Capture actions live

Open a shared document at the start. As decisions form, write them in simple table form—Decision, Owner, Deadline. Avoid wordy minutes; actions are what survive.

Share notes and next actions

A short summary emailed or dropped in Slack keeps momentum hot. If you wait an hour, half the room is already on their next task and the energy dissipates.

Set reminders and close loops

Add tasks to the project board or calendar-based ticklers. When Clara’s LinkedIn creative launches, reply to the notes thread: “Done—live as of 09:05.” That closure lets the team skip a needless follow-up meeting.

Meetings recapture their value when every invite names an outcome, every participant arrives prepared, discussion stays relentlessly on point and actions surface instantly. Protect those rules and your calendar turns from a sinkhole into a decision engine—leaving you deliberate time for campaign building, data analysis and the creative work that actually drives growth.