If you think you're having more meetings than you did a few years ago, you're absolutely right. Since the pandemic, meetings have multiplied in frequency, in length, and in how they bleed into evenings and weekends.

In every organization I work with, the calendars tell the same story: back-to-back meetings, each one an opportunity to advance your priorities, solve problems, and make decisions that matter. Yet many of you tell me you're spending more time in meetings than actually doing the work that moves your local governments forward.

The weight of it is real. Too many meetings, too little progress, and the nagging sense that things could be better. And it's taking a toll on your capacity for deep work, your focus, and your well-being.

In conversations I've had with leaders in Washington local governments, the frustrations are clear and consistent: discussions without decisions tops the list. Going off-topic and tangents is a close second. And many cited meetings that lacked a clear purpose or agenda.

Trying to fix the entire culture around meetings in your organization? That can feel impossible.

But what if you started with one meeting? Your most important one?
 

Why Your Leadership Team Meeting Matters

Meetings are the operating system of organizations. Every decision you make, every policy you implement, every bit of progress your local government achieves—it all happens through meetings. And your recurring leadership team meeting (the one where you and your department heads implement the policy and direction set by your elected officials) is where strategic clarity emerges, where silos break down, and where diverse perspectives and conflicting priorities get transformed into unified direction and real results.

When your leadership team is functioning as the first team of the local government, when department heads are working together as a cohesive unit, not just leading their own departments, the potential is enormous. This meeting sets the tone for how your entire organization operates.

How often do we stop to ask: Is our leadership team meeting working as well as it could?

We measure everything else in local government. Response times. Budget variance. Permit processing. But the effectiveness of this crucial meeting, where we make the decisions that drive all those other outcomes? That remains largely unexamined.
 

The Question Rarely Asked

You can't improve what you don't examine. And most leadership teams have never stopped to look at their most important recurring meeting with any real scrutiny.

Not because it's not important. But because when you're in the middle of it, when the calendar is full and the work is urgent, stopping to assess feels like one more thing you don't have time for.

But here's what I notice: The teams that do take that pause, the ones who step back and ask honest questions about whether their leadership meeting is serving them well, those are the teams that find leverage.

They're not asking, "Are we doing this perfectly?" They're asking "Is this working for us? What could make it better?"

Simple questions. But rarely asked.
 

The Starting Point

If you're going to examine one thing about your leadership team meeting, start here: Does everyone on your team have the same answer to "what is this meeting for?" Not the calendar title. The actual purpose.

If your department heads would give different answers, or vague ones, that tells you something valuable. You can't optimize a meeting when there's no shared clarity about what it's meant to accomplish.

Everything else (the structure, the agenda, the follow-through) flows from that foundational question.
 

Where Change Happens

Your leadership team meeting is where strategic thinking happens, where priorities get aligned, and where your senior team develops the shared focus that drives everything else. When this meeting works well, the ripple effects are significant. Clarity cascades. Departments align. Your team models the collaboration and focus you want to see throughout the organization.

You don't need to fix everything at once. One shift in how you approach your most critical meeting can have real impact: on your team's effectiveness, on your own capacity to lead strategically, and on the outcomes your community depends on.

Even small improvements in how you meet can pay dividends in clarity, in time saved, and in better results for your organization and your community.

Every decision that moves your local government forward starts in a meeting. Let's make them count.