Functional Meeting Types & Best Practices

Joe Steinkamp

2 min readMay 8, 2023

I intend to iterate on this article but wanted to get the skeleton out and would love feedback.

The Types

Decision
Awareness / Status Update
Feedback (Broad to Specific Variability)
Collaborative: (Definition/Sensemaking— share collective understanding | Ideation — generate new ideas | Planning)
Information Sharing
Retrospective

Decision

Goal: Make the decision to move forward within the meeting.
Timeframe: Short — under 15 minutes

Everyone has enough background information before the meeting. Or include reading time at the beginning of the meeting if you have culture that struggles with coming prepared to meeting (maybe a topic for another article).
A single decision-maker, if necessary — ideally everyone is aligned but if a group struggles to make a decision then a single individual will decide.

Awareness

Goal: Align the team via updates on progress, challenges, and next steps.
Timeframe: Short — 5 minutes per topic

Think of a scrum stand as inspiration for how to run these meetings.

Feedback

Goal: Receive and provide critical feedback that constructively helps an individual or group increase the quality of their work.
Timeframe (Strategic): Medium — 20 minutes
Timeframe (Tactical): Short — 10 minutes

Collaboration

Goal: A group works together to make a high impact on a particular initiative in a short period where more diversity in thought is extra beneficial.
Timeframe: Long — Can vary greatly in time based on depth of focus area but typically you’re going to need at least 45 minutes.

Talk less, write more. Reserve speaking for presenting top thoughts and sharing top feedback then write everything else to enable everyone to participate more.

Definition Basic Outline

Basic Outline: (1) First align on the focus area (goal, problem, etc…). (2) Individually capture additional context. (3) Individually frame. (4) Synthesis.

Ideation Basic Outline

Basic Outline: (1) Get grounded with inspiration. (2) Individually ideate. (3) Group sharing. (4) Synthesis.

Planning

Come in with enough background information

Information Sharing

Goal: Provide information to others to educate them on a given topic.
Timeframe: Times can vary based on the formating of share.

Maximum of 20 minutes for a presentation, more interactive sessions can be longer.
Leave time for Q&A.

Retrospective

Goal: Have a group reflect on their different perspectives and experiences of the same event to consider improvements for next time.
Timeframe: Medium — 20 minutes

These meetings can be used in combination of each other in a lot of different ways. For example, you could run a planning meeting after a feedback meeting to provide all the context but it can be a little less efficient.

First Try Not to Have a Meeting

Awareness and Feedback meetings are primed for not having a meeting — They’re best when you combine them with another purpose. For example, a design critique is great as a meeting because not only does it provide feedback but gives all the designers a chance to learn from each other and hone their craft.