Most meetings are wasteful because they’re organized around what people will discuss rather than what they will accomplish. “Let’s meet to talk about the product roadmap” produces a very different outcome than “Let’s meet to finalize our Q4 feature priorities.”
The difference is simple but profound: one is activity-focused , the other is outcome-focused.
When you request a meeting without clarity about the desired result, you’re essentially asking someone to commit time without knowing what they’ll get in return. That’s not just inefficient—it’s disrespectful. And more importantly, it leads to meetings that feel productive in the moment but produce nothing actionable afterward.
Here’s a template that forces clarity about outcomes and dramatically increases the likelihood your meetings will actually accomplish something worthwhile.
The Template
Subject: Meeting request: [Specific outcome you’re seeking]
Body:
Hi [Name],
Outcome: By the end of our meeting, we will have [specific, concrete result—a decision made, a plan created, an agreement reached, a problem solved].
Benefit to you: This will [specific value or benefit to the recipient—save you time, unblock your team, clarify strategy, reduce risk, create opportunity].
Background: [2-3 sentences of essential context. Only include information necessary to understand the outcome. Resist the urge to write the full story—if they need more background, that can happen in the meeting.]
My role: I’ll come prepared with [specific materials, analysis, recommendations, or questions that will help achieve the outcome].
Questions I hope we’ll answer:
- [Specific question that must be resolved]
- [Specific question that must be resolved]
- [Specific question that must be resolved]
[Your assistant/their assistant can coordinate scheduling.]
Looking forward to connecting.
[Your name]
Why This Template Works
It forces you to think before you ask. If you can’t articulate what will be different after the meeting ends, you probably don’t need the meeting. “Let’s discuss X” is not an outcome. “We will decide X” is an outcome.
It respects their decision-making process. By clearly stating the benefit to them, you’re acknowledging that their time is valuable and should produce returns. They can evaluate whether the proposed outcome justifies the time investment.
It enables preparation. When both parties know exactly what the meeting needs to accomplish, they can prepare appropriately. Vague meeting purposes lead to vague preparation, which leads to vague results.
It creates accountability. A clearly defined outcome makes it obvious whether the meeting succeeded or failed. “Did we make that decision?” is a yes/no question. “Did we have a good discussion?” is meaningless.
It prevents scope creep. When meetings lack defined outcomes, they tend to expand to fill time and drift across topics. A clear outcome acts as a forcing function that keeps the conversation focused and productive.
The Core Elements Explained
Outcome: The North Star
This is the single most important element. Everything else exists to support this.
The outcome must be:
- Specific: Not “discuss strategy” but “finalize our market entry approach for the Northeast region”
- Achievable: Can this actually be accomplished in a meeting, or does it require additional work first?
- Measurable: You should be able to say definitively whether you achieved it or not
- Action-oriented: Use verbs like decide, finalize, resolve, create, align, approve—not discuss, explore, or review
Bad outcome: “We will discuss the budget.” Good outcome: “We will finalize the Q4 budget allocation across the three departments.”
Bad outcome: “We will talk about the product roadmap.” Good outcome: “We will prioritize the top five features for the next release and assign owners.”
The outcome should be something that moves work forward in a concrete way. If the meeting ends and nothing has changed—no decision made, no plan created, no problem solved—then it was a waste of time, no matter how pleasant the conversation.
Benefit to Them: The Value Exchange
Don’t assume the value is obvious. Make it explicit.
This forces you to think from their perspective: Why should they invest time in this meeting? What’s in it for them?
Sometimes the benefit is direct: “This will unblock your team from starting the migration project.”
Sometimes it’s about risk reduction: “This will ensure we’re aligned before presenting to the board.”
Sometimes it’s about efficiency: “This will prevent three separate conversations we’d otherwise need to have.”
If you genuinely can’t articulate a benefit to the other person, you should question whether you’re asking for the right meeting with the right person. Maybe you need to do more groundwork first. Maybe someone else should be involved. Maybe the meeting isn’t actually necessary.
Background: Essential Context Only
This is where most people go wrong. They write pages of background, trying to tell the entire story. Resist this urge.
The background should provide just enough context for the recipient to:
- Understand why this outcome matters
- Assess whether they’re the right person for this conversation
- Do any necessary preparation
If someone needs extensive background to participate effectively, that’s a signal that perhaps you should send pre-reading materials or that the meeting is premature.
Keep it to 2-3 sentences. If you can’t summarize the essential context that briefly, you haven’t clarified your own thinking sufficiently.
Your Role: What You’re Bringing
This demonstrates that you’re not just delegating the work of achieving the outcome to them. You’re coming prepared.
Specify what you’ll bring:
- “I’ll come with three recommended approaches and analysis of the tradeoffs”
- “I’ll prepare a draft timeline for us to refine”
- “I’ll have done competitive analysis to inform our discussion”
- “I’ll bring the financial projections and assumptions for review”
This serves two purposes:
- It shows respect—you’re doing your homework
- It helps them prepare appropriately, knowing what you’ll cover
Questions: The Agenda in Disguise
Instead of a traditional agenda that lists topics to “discuss,” frame your agenda as specific questions that need answers.
This subtle shift changes everything. Questions create clarity about what success looks like. If you leave the meeting with clear answers to these questions, you’ve achieved your outcome.
Good questions are:
- Specific enough to have definitive answers
- Open-ended enough to allow real discussion
- Ordered logically (often from strategic to tactical)
- Limited in number (3-5 questions for most meetings)
Example for a product strategy meeting:
- Which customer segment should we prioritize for the Q4 launch?
- What’s our pricing strategy for enterprise vs. mid-market?
- How should we sequence feature releases to maximize early adoption?
These questions create a natural structure for the conversation while keeping it focused on producing the desired outcome.
Common Patterns and Anti-Patterns
Pattern: Decision-Making Meetings
Outcome: We will decide [specific choice between clear alternatives]
Questions format:
- What criteria should we use to evaluate the options?
- What are the risks and mitigations for each approach?
- What implementation implications stem from each choice?
These meetings work best when you’ve done the analysis beforehand and can present clear options with trade-offs. The meeting is for making the decision, not discovering what the options are.
Pattern: Alignment Meetings
Outcome: We will align on [strategy/approach/priorities] and identify any gaps or concerns
Questions format:
- Where do we already have strong agreement?
- Where do our perspectives or priorities differ?
- What additional information or discussion would resolve the differences?
These meetings acknowledge that alignment is valuable but shouldn’t be assumed. The goal is to surface and resolve divergences, not to paper over them with vague consensus.
Pattern: Problem-Solving Meetings
Outcome: We will identify the root cause of [problem] and commit to a solution approach
Questions format:
- What do we know about when and why this problem occurs?
- What solutions have we already tried, and why didn’t they work?
- What constraints must any solution respect?
These meetings require clear problem definition upfront. If you can’t articulate the specific problem you’re solving, you’re not ready for a solution meeting.
Anti-Pattern: Status Update Meetings
If your outcome is “share progress on project X,” you probably don’t need a meeting. Send an email or use your project management tool.
Meetings should be for things that require synchronous interaction: decisions, collaborative problem-solving, sensitive conversations, brainstorming with real-time building on ideas.
Status can almost always be shared asynchronously.
Anti-Pattern: Information Download Meetings
If your outcome is “inform the team about X,” question whether you need everyone in a room. Can you write it up and answer questions asynchronously?
The meeting format is expensive. Use it when the medium itself adds value—when discussion, debate, or real-time interaction is essential to the outcome.
Anti-Pattern: “Let’s Discuss” Meetings
“Discuss” is not an outcome. It’s an activity. What should be different after you discuss it?
Every time you’re tempted to schedule a meeting to “discuss” something, push yourself to define what should result from that discussion. Then make that result your outcome.
The Deeper Principle: Outcome-Driven Work
This template reflects a broader philosophy about how knowledge work should function.
Most organizations are structured around activities: meetings, reports, reviews, updates. But activities are means, not ends. What actually matters are outcomes: decisions made, problems solved, strategies clarified, plans created.
When you organize work around activities, you get busy but not productive. People attend meetings, send emails, create documents—but nothing substantively changes. The work exists for its own sake rather than in service of results.
When you organize work around outcomes, everything sharpens. Time becomes precious because it’s clearly connected to results. Meetings become rare because you only convene them when synchronous interaction will produce something specific. Preparation improves because everyone knows what they’re trying to achieve.
This meeting request template is a small manifestation of this larger principle. By forcing clarity about the outcome, it transforms meetings from time-consuming rituals into results-producing collaborations.
How to Use This Template
Start with the outcome. Don’t begin by opening your email client. Begin by asking yourself: “What needs to be different after this meeting?” If you can’t answer that clearly, you’re not ready to request the meeting.
Work backward from the outcome. Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, the other elements become easier. What benefit does that outcome create for the other person? What context do they need? What questions must be answered to reach that outcome?
Be honest about whether you need the meeting. Many things that feel like they require meetings actually don’t. Could you get the same outcome through a well-written proposal that people respond to asynchronously? Could you break this into smaller decisions that don’t require everyone in a room?
Prepare to achieve your stated outcome. Don’t use the template as a formality and then show up unprepared. If you said you’d bring analysis, bring it. If you said you’d prepare recommendations, prepare them. The template creates an implicit commitment.
Hold yourself accountable. At the end of the meeting, ask: “Did we achieve the outcome we stated?” If not, why not? What would need to be different next time?
What You’ll Discover
When you start using this template consistently, several things happen:
You request fewer meetings. The discipline of defining outcomes reveals that many meetings aren’t actually necessary. This is a feature, not a bug.
Your meetings become shorter. When everyone knows exactly what needs to be accomplished, conversations stay focused. Meetings that might have taken an hour finish in 30 minutes.
Decisions actually get made. Instead of meetings that end with “let’s think about this more” or “let’s schedule a follow-up,” you get closure. The outcome was defined upfront, so there’s natural pressure to achieve it.
People take your meeting requests more seriously. When someone sees that you consistently run outcome-driven meetings that respect their time and produce results, they become more willing to meet with you.
You develop clarity muscle. The practice of articulating outcomes makes you better at strategic thinking more broadly. It forces you to distinguish between activities and results, means and ends.
Beyond Meetings
This framework applies to almost any form of work:
Email: What outcome am I trying to achieve with this email? What should be different after someone reads it?
Reports: What decision or understanding should this report create? What should change as a result of this analysis?
Projects: What specific, measurable outcomes define success? How will we know if this project actually accomplished anything?
The question “What will be different when this is done?” is remarkably powerful across all domains of knowledge work. It cuts through activity and forces clarity about what actually matters.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Most of us resist this level of clarity because it creates accountability. When outcomes are vague, everything can feel successful. When outcomes are specific, failure becomes visible.
“We had a good discussion about the product strategy” is safe. No one can prove it wasn’t good.
“We finalized our Q4 feature priorities” is risky. Either you did or you didn’t. Either the decision was good or it wasn’t.
But this discomfort is precisely what makes the approach valuable. Vague outcomes allow work to expand without ever producing results. Specific outcomes create pressure to actually accomplish something.
If you’re serious about being productive rather than just busy, you have to embrace this discomfort.
Implementation
Copy this template. Use it the next time you need to request a meeting. Force yourself to complete every element.
You’ll probably find the “Outcome” section hardest to write. That’s normal. Push through it. If you can’t articulate what should be different after the meeting, you’ve learned something important: you probably don’t need the meeting yet.
Refine the template for your context and style, but keep the core elements: outcome, benefit, background, your role, questions.
And here’s the real test: After each meeting you hold using this template, ask yourself honestly whether you achieved the stated outcome. If you consistently did, you’re on the right track. If you didn’t, figure out why—and fix it before your next meeting.
The goal isn’t to have more meetings or even better meetings. The goal is to have meetings that actually accomplish something worth the time they consume.
How do you ensure your meetings produce concrete outcomes? What frameworks or approaches have you found effective? I’d be interested to hear what works in your context.
Originally published November 9, 2013