I hate meetings. Here is the one I kept.

I hate meetings. I hate being in meetings. I hate sitting in meetings. I think most meetings are incredible wastes of time. People manage tasks instead of driving outcomes on the things that matter.

So instead of just complaining about it, I actually did something about it. I created a way for a business to drive outcomes instead of just managing tasks, and it doesn’t require a bunch more meetings.

One meeting

You set your goals. People pitch their ideas, and the company runs on monthly cycles. Then you hold one meeting. One meeting. It’s called a decision pitch meeting. People pitch their ideas. It’s eleven minutes for each one. And then you decide: are we doing this next month or not?

Everything else is written down

Once something is in the execution cycle, the person who owns it goes into the system and provides a simple weekly update. Then you can just see: is it tracking, or is it not tracking?

We don’t need a meeting for that. Each person provides an update once a week. It doesn’t matter what day of the week. In my business, it’s on Thursdays. And I know exactly what’s going on.

Let people be adults

Once we agree that this is where we’re going on our goals, and that this is a good idea to get us toward those goals, now just go do it. Go get it done, and use your figure-it-out mentality to execute. People get to do the adulting. And you don’t have to sit in more meetings to hear about the issues.

What if it goes wrong

At the end of the month, they have to choose one of two statuses. Was it executed or failed? And it shows by person and at the company level: percentage success, percentage failure.

If you fail a lot, then we’ve just identified that there’s a challenge. Either in the business, or with your ability to execute, or with our ability to say this could be done in a month.

Failure is feedback, and it’s good, but we need to be able to see it.

Adam WeisnerFounder of Unbreakable OS and an active CEO who runs real companies on it.