Olimova Mohinur

3. Always have an agenda 

With recurring meetings, it’s easy to fall into the trap of 

meeting for habit’s sake, without a clear purpose or 

outcome for the meeting.  

This is especially true for remote meetings where it can be 

easy to meander around topics, run too long, or have a 

meeting that never really justified the time invested in the 

first place.  

This is why Gitlab’s CEO will literally cancel any meeting 

without a set agenda: 

“If there’s no agenda attached to a meeting, I will join the 

meeting and I will shut it down one minute in. And I expect 

everyone in the company to do the same thing.” – Sid Sijbrandij, 

CEO, GitLab 

This kind of leadership by example is a great way to 

emphasize the importance of preparing properly for every 

meeting, whether with an agenda or a memo.