© 2025 James Hardie – Course Correction Consulting Ltd. The EASE Framework™ is a proprietary model developed by James Hardie to support the creation of psychologically safe, empowered, and strategically aligned teams. All rights reserved.
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Make meetings work with the EASE Framework. Match purpose to format, set clear roles, and close with actions for faster decisions and better results.
"I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." Blaise Pascal and others, may apply to meetings. Most meetings fail because the purpose, format, and roles do not match. Meet with EASE. Explore the outcome and choose a specific format. Align roles, prep, and timeboxes. Support the room with clear norms, real-time logs, and inclusive facilitation. Empower people by closing with owners, deadlines, and a ten-line recap. Borrow a simple “should we meet” decision tree to avoid needless gatherings, and use a Meeting Fit Matrix to keep formats honest. Over time, this becomes a habit that speeds decisions and lightens calendars.
Most “bad meetings” are just mismatches between purpose, format, and roles. Fix those three with EASE and meetings become short, useful, and repeatable.
Playbook
Definition: Meeting Fit is the alignment between the meeting’s purpose, chosen format, and participant roles.
Data point: A simple decision tree to determine whether to meet, and what kind, materially improves outcomes; see Shane Snow’s flowchart on choosing if and how to meet. report.snow.academy
“Mastering the Art of Leading with EASE” delves deep into the strategies and mindset shifts you need to realign your goals and reclaim your path, with EASE. Today we apply that discipline to the everyday lever that shapes culture more than policy does, meetings.
Many teams treat every gathering as the same thing with different calendar titles. That is why the hour fills, the agenda drifts, dominant voices steer, and nothing moves. Meetings work when the purpose, format, and roles match. They stall when they do not. Working together is practice that must be nurtured and meetings are one of those areas to do this.
Meetings are not the practical alternative to work, or are they?
“Meet with EASE” is a simple operating picture you can teach in an afternoon and apply forever.
Write the desired output in one sentence starting with a verb, the desired action... The purpose of this meeting is to inform/ to decide between/ to discuss/ to understand. Then choose the format that serves it. Borrowing the spirit of Shane Snow’s “should we meet” decision flow, and Helen Chapman's 'The Meeting Book', only call a meeting when collaboration beats asynchronous work or brings it all together, and pick a specific type with purpose. The purpose of this meeting is...
Common formats and when to use them
If no format obviously fits, you may not need a meeting, yet.
People cannot play a part they do not know they have. Clarify who is: Chair, Facilitator, Scribe, Decider, and Contributors. You might use this to build your RACI Matrix. Send pre-reads or questions 24 hours before. For decision forums, ask for written opinions in advance to reduce groupthink and airtime bias.
Helen Chapman’s The Meeting Book is a practical guide for clarity, habit, and craft. Her emphasis on simple twists that make meetings deliver every time aligns with this step, especially the insistence on preparation and structure.
Timebox template
Psychological safety is not softness, it is the condition for candour and speed. Set norms: curiosity first, one person at a time, disagree well, note unknowns. Park tangents. Use prompts that invite quieter voices. Capture assumptions explicitly.
Facilitation checklist
A meeting that ends without clear movement teaches learned helplessness. Finish with: what, who, when, and how we will know it is done. Send a ten-line recap: purpose, key facts, decisions, risks, actions. Archive to a shared place.
Ten-line recap skeleton
Do this for a month and you will feel the culture shift.
“He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War
In meetings, “superior force” is clarity. “Inferior force” is confusion. We choose which one runs the room.
How do I reduce my meeting load without missing context?
Use broadcast briefings for status, reserve decisions for defined forums, and insist on written recaps that anyone can scan in two minutes.
What if people arrive unprepared?
Provide a one page summary of the preparation and allow time to read in the meeting, if needed. By moving preparation into the invite with two named questions, you can pause the agenda item if pre-reads are not done and let people catch up. People learn quickly when the meeting does not do their homework.
How do I stop dominant voices?
The HIPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion, in the military Generals are reminded they are always the General) is often the dominant voice, it may be you. Adopt round-robin first takes, ask for written inputs before discussion, and a visible turn list. Invite two valid counter-arguments (strategic choices) before you decide, to avoid binary decision making. Nurture your loyal dissent, it is your great ally because the competition is not going to care. Consider anonymous dissent cards and get each other to advocate for the dissent. Keep dissent in mind when pivots are rquired.
We are hybrid and remote. Does this still work?
Yes. Require cameras for small decision forums, document on screen, and rotate facilitators and scribes to share load. Consider the use of AI scribes.
How do I measure improvement?
Track decisions per hour, per meeting, per person present, action completion rates, and the number of meetings converted to asynchronous activity. Review monthly. Feel the tempo shift.