— SEPTEMBER 6TH, 2026 —

MAKE YOUR WEEKLY MEETING WORTH IT

A 90-minute meeting sounds reasonable. That is until you put 17 people in the room.

At one point, that’s how many people we had in our weekly Senior Leadership Team meeting at Ninety. Do the math and that one meeting took 25.5 hours of company time. With that many people there, we had to be a lot more disciplined about what actually needed the full team.

With Labor Day tomorrow, I’ve been thinking about how our people spend their working hours. If I’m asking 17 people to give me 90 minutes, I want to make sure we’re using that time well.

What changed the meeting was getting much clearer about what needed the full team’s attention. Not every update needs to be discussed as a group and plenty of conversations are better handled by two people outside the weekly.

Today, when our leadership team meets, we aim to finish in under 90 minutes. Before an issue makes it onto the agenda, we want to know what it is, who owns it, why it matters, and what the person raising it needs from the team.

Read more in How to Run a Better Weekly Leadership Meeting in Under 90 Minutes.

When you bring your leaders together, that time should be spent on the things that really need them. Take a look at your next weekly. How much of what’s on the agenda actually needs everyone in the room?

PERSPECTIVES

“Remember too that your time is your one finite resource, and when you say ‘yes’ to one thing you are inevitably saying ‘no’ to another."
— Andrew S. Grove, former Chairman and CEO of Intel

MARK MY WORDS

Before we bring an issue into the weekly, we ask: Why are we solving this here?

If an issue involves several Core Functions, puts a Rock or key measurable at risk, or requires a decision from the Senior Leadership Team this week, there’s a good reason to bring it into the weekly. But sometimes the answer is, “I just want everyone to know.” That’s probably a Headline.

And if two people can work something out on their own, it doesn’t need to take up the full team’s time.

And sometimes someone raises an issue but can’t quite explain what the issue is yet. I’d rather they spend more time getting clear before bringing it to the meeting than have the entire team spend 15 minutes trying to figure it out for them.

We’ve gotten a lot more protective of those 90 minutes. If something is going to take up the whole team’s time, it should actually need all of us.

TUNE IN

ICYMI: The Math of Trust — feat. Kris Snyder
I sat down with Ninety’s Chief Advocate Kris Snyder to look back on 10 years of Ninety. We talked pretty openly about some of the decisions that worked, some that didn’t, and what we’d do differently today.

[Watch the full episode]

ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD

In case you missed it, here’s more from Founder’s Framework:

How Great Leadership Teams Stay Aligned Through Change

Leadership teams can agree on where the company is going and still see different things as urgent right now. In this article, I look at why that happens and share a simple way to sort what belongs now, next, later, or not at all.

[Read Now]

Time passes a lot faster than you think. Be thoughtful about how you spend it.