Before you change the company's meeting calendar, war-game it. List every recurring board, committee, and executive meeting, and give each one a purpose, the decisions it owns, the inputs it needs and when they are due, who attends, and how long it runs. Meetings that cannot fill those fields merge or end. Then check that every important decision has exactly one home, and that directors get time to read before they decide. Paste the current calendar, recent agendas, last quarter's decisions with where each was made, and the proposed calendar into one request. Instruct Pingpong to flag meetings that review the same information, decisions with no home or two homes, pre-read deadlines too late to be read, and committees with no charter or end date. Review your written answers in a second round.
This page is for chief executives and chiefs of staff redesigning the formal meeting rhythm of the executive team and the board. The chief executive's personal hands-on rhythm is a different question, covered in war-game a founder-mode operating cadence before the board sees it. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
What each meeting must state
- Purpose: one sentence. "Alignment" does not count.
- Decisions it owns: the specific calls that get made here and nowhere else.
- Inputs and deadline: what must be written and circulated, and how far ahead.
- Attendees: who must be there, who may send a delegate, and who should not come.
- Length and frequency: matched to the decisions it owns.
Meetings accrete
Nobody designs a company's meeting calendar. It accumulates. A weekly review starts during a crisis and keeps running after the crisis ends. A steering committee forms around a project that shipped a year ago. Three meetings look at the same dashboard because each was added by a different leader who wanted to see it in their own room. Meanwhile the decisions that matter happen in hallways because no meeting owns them. Board calendars drift too: the deck grows, arrives later, and the meeting becomes a presentation.
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. A fast-growing 300-person company wants to reset its meeting rhythm before the next board meeting.
The chief of staff pastes the calendar, three months of agendas, 40 recent decisions with where each was made, and the proposal.
A useful pass finds that each executive spends about 11 hours a week in recurring meetings. A Monday staff meeting, a Wednesday operations review, and a Friday metrics meeting all review the same numbers. Six steering committees exist, and two of them made pricing and hiring decisions the executive team never saw. Of the 40 decisions, 11 were made outside any meeting. The board meets six times a year for four hours, and its 120-page deck arrives the day before. There is no audit committee, so the annual budget reaches the full board without a finance preview. Directors have no executive session.
The revised calendar has one weekly executive meeting of 90 minutes for decisions only, with written pre-reads due a day ahead. A monthly business review replaces the Wednesday and Friday meetings. Steering committees drop from six to two, each with a charter and an end date. Pricing, which slipped three weeks last quarter for lack of an owner, gets a home in the monthly review. Recurring time per executive falls to about six hours.
For the board, the change is four regular meetings and two short calls a year. Pre-reads go out five business days ahead, with the main deck capped at 30 pages and the rest in an appendix. A consent agenda handles routine approvals, freeing time for one strategic question. Every meeting ends with an executive session for directors. A new audit committee reviews financials a week before each board meeting, and the compensation committee meets on a fixed schedule twice a year. Counsel confirms the committee charters fit the bylaws.
What the board approves
- The board and committee calendar for the year.
- Committee charters, membership, and what each recommends to the full board.
- Pre-read deadlines and the consent agenda rule.
- The standing executive session.
The executive calendar does not need board approval, but directors will want to know where their decisions now get made.
A request you can copy
Below are our meeting calendar, recent agendas, last quarter's decisions with where each was made, and the proposed calendar. For each meeting, state its purpose, decisions owned, inputs, attendees, and length. Flag meetings that duplicate each other, decisions with no clear home, and pre-read deadlines too short to be useful. Check board and committee timing. Suggest which meetings to keep, merge, or end. Stop there so we can answer in writing, then review our answers.
How Pingpong runs the review
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer, with instructions to assess the work so far. For the steps inside the app, see running your first review.
What a model can't review
A model cannot tell which meetings people value for reasons that never appear on an agenda, such as the one weekly hour when the executive team actually talks. Ask before you cut.
When the decision goes to the board, see war-game a decision before the board meeting. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.