Know Your Role in Every Meeting
Decide before the meeting whether you are approver, consulted, informed, or sounding board
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
Ek argues that because most knowledge work happens in meetings, yet people rarely design them, huge productivity gains come from being intentful about why a meeting exists and what each person's role is. He distinguishes several roles a leader can play: approver, someone merely consulted, someone informed, or a sounding board for ideas. Many assume the CEO must always be the approver, but with a great team that is often the wrong role. He also fixes the common failure mode where a talented employee spends the whole meeting reading a PowerPoint the leader already saw, leaving under ten percent of the time for real discussion. His remedy: read materials beforehand, state the purpose up front, and reserve the meeting for the questions and next steps that actually matter.
Origin
Developed from Ek's own frustration at Spotify with wasteful meetings and from watching talented employees squander rare high-stakes exposure by reading slides aloud.
Core principles
- 01Most knowledge work happens in meetings, yet meetings are rarely designed
- 02A meeting must have an explicit purpose stated up front
- 03The senior person is not always the decider; sometimes they only advise or listen
- 04Reading materials beforehand frees the meeting for the questions that matter
How to run it
- 1
State the purpose
Before the meeting, be explicit about why it exists: review, decision, recognition, or ideation.
Pro tip If the real goal is to recognise someone, name that so the meeting can be designed around it.
- 2
Pre-read the material
Read any materials in advance, or spend only the first five minutes on a summary rather than a full readout.
Watch out Do not let the meeting become someone reading a document everyone already received.
- 3
Choose your role
Decide whether you are the approver, someone consulted, someone informed, or a sounding board, and make it clear.
Pro tip With a strong team, deliberately step back from being the decider.
- 4
Spend time on what matters
Use the bulk of the meeting on whether these are the right questions and what the next steps should be.
In the wild
Ek noticed employees who might meet the CEO once or twice in a career would spend the whole slot reading a PowerPoint he had already read, leaving under ten percent of the meeting for discussion. He realised the meeting's true purpose was often recognition, which should have been named and designed for.
→ He began prepping people on meeting design, pre-reading materials, and stating the purpose up front to make each meeting productive.
Common mistakes
Defaulting to approver
Assuming the senior person must always decide undermines a capable team and creates a bottleneck.
Running the meeting with no stated purpose
Without an explicit purpose, meetings drift into readouts and leave no time for the real questions.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders and teams who want every meeting to have a clear purpose and clear decision rights.
Not ideal for
Purely social or open-ended brainstorming gatherings where roles are intentionally fluid.
From the transcript
“you can be an approver you can be consulted you can be informed in a meeting”
From the episode
#484: Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify — Habits, Systems and Mental Models for Top Performance