Want to Get the Most Out of Every Meeting? Ask This 5-Word Question Before You Leave the Room

I’m convinced that two things will be the death of us all.

Number one: death. Number two: meetings.

There’s an overwhelming amount of data on how meetings are not only not much of a productivity enhancer, but they’re also a big-time detractor. I’ll pick just one source, an article from fellow Inc.com columnist Peter Economy, in which he cites a study from Doodle’s 2019 State of Meetings report that showed just how much time and money are wasted in unproductive meetings. Hold on to your hats–in the U.S. alone, bad meetings are predicted to end up costing almost $400 billion in lost productivity, and that’s just during 2019.

When I attended or heard about standing meetings (like a weekly leadership team meeting, for example) in which people consistently walked away without…