Most meetings fail because they mix three different modes. Each needs different prep, different participants, different decision rights.
Review
Purpose: Track progress against plan. Identify variance. Decide: keep course or intervene.
Cadence: Regular (weekly/monthly)
Participants: Owner + stakeholders with decision rights
Prep required:
- Metrics vs targets (variance highlighted)
- Root cause if off-track
- Proposed corrective action
Decision mode: Binary - stay course or intervene. No debate on the plan itself.
Red flags:
- Re-explaining the strategy
- Debating whether targets are right
- Long context-setting before showing numbers
Tactics
Purpose: Coordinate execution. Remove blockers. Sequence work.
Cadence: Frequent (daily standups to weekly)
Participants: Execution team + dependencies
Prep required:
- Status: done, doing, blocked
- Specific asks (who needs what from whom)
- Capacity reality (WIP visibility)
Decision mode: Fast - unblock, sequence, commit to next actions.
Red flags:
- Long updates with no asks
- Strategic debates (“should we even be doing this?”)
- Status theatre without decisions
Strategy
Purpose: Set direction. Test choices. Allocate resources to big bets.
Cadence: Infrequent (quarterly to annually)
Participants: Leadership team + domain experts
Prep required:
- Hypothesis being tested
- Evidence for/against (not just “for”)
- What we’d need to believe for this to work
- Rational opposite (what would we do instead?)
Decision mode: Rigorous - two-way door decisions need scrutiny. Debate the logic, not the people.
Red flags:
- Operational details drowning out strategic choice
- No clear alternatives considered
- Consensus-seeking without testing assumptions
How to use this
Diagnosis: Look at your calendar. What’s labeled “strategy session” but feels like status updates? What’s labeled “standup” but turns into 90-minute debates?
Fix: Name the mode explicitly. “This is a review - we’re not debating the plan, we’re checking progress.” Prep, participants, and decision rights follow from that.
Test: After the meeting, can you clearly state what was decided and what mode you were in? If not, you mixed modes.