Four-element meeting gate

When This Fires

• Before scheduling or accepting any meeting invitation
• At the start of a meeting that was scheduled without these elements
• When meetings in your organization consistently produce no clear outcomes
• When you want to politely decline a meeting: "What's the purpose and desired output?"

Common Failure Mode

Meetings with implicit purpose ("everyone knows why we're meeting") and no defined outputs. The meeting happens, discussion occurs, but at the end no one is sure what was decided, who owns what, or whether the meeting achieved its purpose. The same meeting recurs the following week to "continue the discussion."

The Protocol

(1) Before any meeting, check for four elements: Purpose: Is there a clear statement of what decision or outcome the meeting exists to produce? Agenda: Are topics listed with time allocations? Hard stop: Is there a firm end time? Outputs: Is it clear what the meeting must produce (decision, action items, approved document)? (2) If any element is missing → either add it (propose a purpose, create a quick agenda, set a stop time) or cancel/decline the meeting. (3) Share the four elements with all attendees before the meeting starts. (4) At the meeting's end, verify outputs were produced: "We decided X. Action items: A→Person1, B→Person2. Next step: C by [date]." If outputs weren't produced, the meeting failed its purpose — investigate why. (5) For recurring meetings: verify the four elements are still current and the purpose still exists. Stale recurring meetings with outdated purposes are the most common calendar pollution.