DataAI Nexus

Agents / Skills

Meeting Agenda

Skill

Designs the agenda that makes a meeting worth its payroll cost: decisions named as decisions, pre-reads that actually get read, time boxed by importance — and the standing meeting audited for whether it should exist at all.

Best for

  • Meetings that are status theatre ending in 'good discussion'
  • The decision that needed 20 minutes getting 3, after 40 minutes of updates
  • Standing meetings nobody remembers deciding to have

What you give it

  • The meeting's purpose and attendees, the topics competing for it — and for standing meetings, what the last few actually produced

What you get back

  • The agenda with each item typed honestly: DECISION (with the question stated and options attached), DISCUSSION (with its goal), INFORM (demoted to the pre-read unless it needs the room)
  • Time boxed by importance, not arrival order: the big decision gets the fresh half, the updates get the rump — or the pre-read
  • The apparatus that makes it work: the pre-read discipline (sent when, read how), the decision-capture line, and for standing meetings, the audit: what this slot produces versus costs

How it works

  1. Types every item honestly: a DECISION needs the question, the options and the decider named in advance; a DISCUSSION needs its goal stated; an INFORM needs to justify why it is not an email — the typing is what stops status theatre.
  2. Boxes time by importance: the consequential item gets the meeting's fresh first half; updates get the rump, the pre-read, or the door — arrival order and seniority stop deciding the clock.
  3. Builds the pre-read discipline: sent with enough notice to be read, short enough to be read, opened with the reading check — the meeting that discovers its materials live is paying six salaries for silent reading.
  4. Audits the standing meeting: what did the last month of this slot decide or unblock, against its payroll cost — meetings earn their recurrence or lose it.

Example

You: Fix our Monday leadership meeting: 90 minutes, six updates, and the quarter's biggest decision got squeezed into the last five twice running.

Result: The redesign: the six updates became a pre-read with a ten-minute exceptions-only window (anything needing no decision left the room's agenda — the room costs six salaries an hour), the big decision got the first 40 minutes WITH its pre-read (the options memo sent Friday, the two-line reading check opening the slot — the meeting argues options, it does not discover them), two items typed DISCUSSION got goals ('leave with a shortlist', not 'talk about hiring'), and the meeting shrank to 60 minutes. The audit layer came free: two standing items had produced nothing in a month and died. Three weeks in: the decision log shows four decisions made in their full slots, and the meeting that used to run over now ends early.

Limits — please read

  • An agenda enables; facilitation executes — the typed items and boxes arm whoever runs the room.
  • Pre-read discipline is cultural; the structure (short, decision-focused, checked) maximises its odds but cannot force the reading.
  • Some meetings exist for cohesion, not decisions — that is a legitimate type, named honestly rather than dressed as a working session.