Right people, right rooms, right topics

I call this R3 — right rooms, right people, right topics. It’s a filter I run before accepting or scheduling any meeting, and it’s killed more useless calendar entries than any productivity hack I’ve tried.

Right rooms

If nobody in the room can actually make the decision, you’re not in a meeting — you’re in a support group. The right room has people with the seniority, authority, and willingness to make a call. If the best possible outcome of a meeting is “we’ll take this offline to get approval,” the meeting shouldn’t exist.

Right people

Three people who can decide beats fifteen people who need to be “kept in the loop.” Every extra person in a room dilutes accountability and increases the odds of a side quest. The right people are those with the expertise and authority to act — not those who want visibility or fear missing out.

Right topics

Guard the agenda like your time depends on it, because it does. Every discussion should connect directly to shipping or delivering value. If a topic doesn’t pass that test, it belongs in a Slack thread, not a room full of decision-makers.

Most meeting dysfunction isn’t about format or facilitation. It’s about getting these three things wrong. Fix R3, and the meetings fix themselves.