- Every idea gets pitched in writing before the meeting.
- Three minutes to pitch, seven to deliberate, one to decide.
- The leader who owns that goal makes the call: approve, bank or delete.
- Once it is approved, the owner just gives a weekly update. No more meetings about it.
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Step one: every idea gets pitchedStep two: three, seven, oneStep three: one of three answersAfter the meeting: just go do itI hate meetings. I hate sitting in meetings. I think most meetings are incredible wastes of time, and people manage tasks instead of driving outcomes on the things that matter. So instead of complaining about it, I did something about it.
We run on monthly cycles. Every month, before the new cycle starts, each leader runs one meeting to decide what the team will work on next month. I call it the Decision Pitch Meeting. It replaced the all-day quarterly planning session and the weekly ninety-minute meeting I used to sit through.
Step one: every idea gets pitched
Every idea that you want to work on has to be pitched. Anybody can pitch for anybody’s area. But it has to be written down, and it has to answer a few questions.
- Name it. Here is what it is. We want to go get 100 clients.
- Which big goal is it moving you meaningfully toward? That is the litmus test.
- What is the measurable impact? What will this create or improve?
- What is the outcome? What will be true when this is done, and how will we know we got it done? Not "we made progress". We will have this, or we will have done that.
- What objective data supports it? Metrics, trends, failure points, customer input, surveys. If you don’t have any, you have to explain how you know this is something we need to work on next month.
- Who owns it? If nobody owns it, or multiple people own it, then nobody owns it.
Then the pitch goes through an AI gatekeeper. I built it to be a proxy for the way I think and the way I would sniff test an idea. Is this moving us meaningfully toward our goals? What is the objective data? I asked myself what happens when I am not in the room to filter ideas, and how to automate that. This is how.
Here is a real example. Someone pitches "attend five trade shows to bring in new revenue". Outcome: more customers from the shows. Data: more customers equals more revenue. The gatekeeper sends it back for a rewrite. It agrees trade shows can drive growth, but the pitch has no targets, no reason for picking those shows and no funnel math. It tells you what is missing and even gives you a template to fix it. Most bad pitches never make it into the room.
Step two: three, seven, one
Everybody reads the pitch beforehand, so we respect each other’s time. Then the person gets three minutes to pitch it. Use a timer. This is the measurable impact, this is the outcome, this is the objective data. If you can’t pitch it in three minutes, you are not ready to do it anyway.
Then seven minutes to deliberate. This is where you poke holes. You push back. "I don’t think that works. It’s not moving us toward our goals." Seven minutes is a long time. Constraint breeds creativity, and it forces people to respect time.
Then one minute to decide.
That constraint is really important.
Step three: one of three answers
The person who decides is whoever owns that area. If somebody is pitching something for growth, only the growth leader gets to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down, because they are the one responsible for that goal for the year. Every pitch ends with one of three answers.
- Approved. Yeah, we’ll do it. It goes right into the next cycle.
- Deleted. No, we’re not doing it. It’s a shiny object, or it’s just not moving us toward our goals yet.
- Banked. It’s a good idea, but not for next month. Maybe it’s better in February.
One more rule I use: every month, you should have at least one priority in each area. Growth, finance and operations. That makes sure you are growing in a realistic way, not only chasing growth. That happens a lot.
After the meeting: just go do it
Once we agree this is where we’re going, and this is a good idea to get us there, now just go do it. Use your figure-it-out mentality to execute. The person who owns it goes into the system and gives a simple weekly update: what got done, is it on course or deviating. I shouldn’t have to have a meeting to hear you say the words "on track".
At the end of the month they choose one of two statuses. Was it executed, or did it fail? You can see the percentage by person, by area and for the whole company. If we fail a lot, we have identified a challenge, either in the business, in someone’s ability to execute, or in our ability to say what can be done in a month.
Then the month ends, and you run the next decision pitch meeting. Rinse and repeat. You stack up wins.
