How many of your meetings end with a decision to have another meeting?
“OK—let’s meet next week to discuss next steps.”
“We’ll see everyone again next Tuesday.”
“Add that to the next meeting’s agenda.”
An agreement to meet again isn’t real progress. It’s a progress substitute, a convenient way to avoid making a decision about what to do today. Without a decision, nobody needs to jump in and get to work. Why start today if you have to meet again to talk about what to do next? Repeat this a few times and you have a group who spends a lot of time meeting and not enough time actually getting things done.
Instead, make a decision today, something that you can send your attendees away to get started on. If you absolutely cannot make a decision today, spend the meeting identifying what information, funding, or permission you’d need to actually make the call. Then assign the appropriate people to get what you need before you bother meeting again.
The best reason to have a next meeting is to identify what to do next, not to talk more about something that could have been finished already.