New Chapter: An Open Leader's Guide to Better Meetings

Page 118, paragraph 1: "Several years ago I heard an anecdote about meetings that I’ll never forget. A company once kept a scoreboard calculating the cost of a meeting by multiplying the number of people in the meeting by the number of minutes in the room—then/and displayed the result. The question everyone needed to consider: Was the impact of the meeting worth the coast? (The yellow highlight indicates where changes were made, and with regards to the second one, I couldn't decide if I liked "then" or "and" better so I included both for you to consider.)"
Page 119, paragraph 1: Don’t need the quotes around the question. ?
Page 119, bulleted list:
- Daily stand-up (Hyphen needed because implied modifying meeting; see more below regarding the section “Daily standups”)
- Off-site
- All-hands (see above)
Page 120, paragraph 1: Would it be best to close out the paragraph with the bulleted list with the sentence, “In this chapter, I’ll briefly discuss each of these meeting types.” and begin the next paragraph with “Articulating a meeting…”?
Page 120, paragraph 1: Consider doing without the em dash between “type” and “and”. Instead insert a period after “type”, omitting “and”, and beginning another sentence with “determining”. Doing so breaks things up into smaller, more bite-sized chunks for the reader.
Page 120, paragraph 1: Insert a hyphen in “decision-making” at the very end.
Page 120, paragraph 2: Insert a comma between “agenda” and “and”.
Page 120, paragraph 2: Consider replacing “positioned” with “stated” in the last sentence.
Page 120, paragraph 3: Delete “then,” after “meeting” in the first sentence so it reads “At the end of the meeting, recap …”.
Page 120, paragraph 3: I’m not sure what is meant by “(or date for a date)” in the first sentence.
Page 120, “Daily standups” section: Our style guide doesn’t specifically address, so I went to AP. AP has an entry listing a number of “-ups” (functioning as nouns) and says to hyphenate unless included in the list otherwise. Standup does not appear in the list so it seems the hyphen is required. That change needs to be made throughout the article. You’ll also find both variants in this section.
Page 120, paragraph 5: Our style guide doesn’t capitalize “agile”.
Page 121, paragraph 1: I’d make “meetings” singular (“meeting”) in the first sentence so it agrees in number with the subject of the sentence.
Page 121, paragraph 1: Lowercase the “t” in “tightly”.
Page 121, paragraph 2: Delete “then” in the first sentence. It’s not necessary.
Page 121, paragraph 3: There’s another instance of “standup” that will need to be dealt with.
Page 122, paragraph 2: To break things up, consider ending the first sentence with “assignment” and starting a new one with “you”.
Page 122, paragraph 2: Is “then” necessary in the sentence that begins “For example, if you’ve…”?
Page 122, paragraph 2: Insert a comma between “document” and “and”.
Page 122, paragraph 2: I’m not certain what’s meant by the second to last sentence, specifically “... questions and propose that …”.
Page 123, paragraph 1: I’m not following this sentence “You don’t need consensus, … go in the direction that you’re leading with the decision.” Specifically, I’m having trouble with the end that I included after the ellipsis.
Page 123, paragraph 2: AP calls for hyphenating “brown-bag”.
Page 123, paragraph 4: Is “then” necessary in the first sentence?
Page 123, paragraph 4: AP hyphenates “root-cause analysis”.
Page 123, partial paragraph that ends the page: AP calls for hyphenating “brown-bag”.
Page 124, paragraph 2: Insert a comma between “learning” and “but”.
Page 124, paragraph 4: Insert a comma between “through” and “and”.
Page 125, paragraph 1: AP doesn’t hyphenate “prework”. It appears multiple times in the first full paragraph as well as in the following paragraph.
Page 125, paragraph 2: Insert a comma between “act” and “and”.
Page 125, final paragraph: I’d probably go with “thought” instead of “thoughts” in the final sentence.
Page 126, paragraph 2: I’d replace “we’re” with “they’re” in the sentence that begins “Employees are always making …”. That way, you’re in agreement with “employees”.
Page 126, paragraph 2: I’d make a similar change to the following sentence: “So the one-on-one meeting …”.
Page 127, paragraph 1, second bulleted item: I’m not certain about the em dash in the first sentence. You could either drop it, replace it with a comma, or insert a period after “forward” and begin a new sentence with “managers” (dropping “so” altogether).
Page 127, paragraph 1, second bulleted item: The sentence beginning “Even so, we can’t always until…” is unclear. What is it we can’t always do? Is it proceed or move forward on a project?
Page 128, end of the paragraph beginning on the previous page: “Then” isn’t needed in the sentence that begins “Through our adaptability, then, …”. You can delete it and one of the commas as well.
Page 128, numbered list at the bottom of the page: Item 1 should be the introduction into the list, not a part of the list. Also, since you’re going with a numbered list instead of a bulleted list, it would be ideal to introduce the idea of a numbered set of steps in that sentence by inserting “six” between “these” and “steps”.
Page 129, paragraph 2: Insert a comma between “feedback” and “and”.
Page 130, paragraph 1: Insert a comma between “transparent” and “and”.
Page 130, paragraph 3: Insert “that” between “events” and “steal”.
Page 130, paragraph 4: “First and foremost,” isn’t necessary at the beginning of the second sentence. If you feel you have to have a transition, “first” by itself is sufficient.
Page 131, paragraph 1: I’d probably replace the colon after “you” with a period and start a fresh sentence with “Set”.
Page 131, paragraph 2: I’d go with “It’s cliche, but it’s true. We’re always learning.” instead of using the colon.
Page 131,paragraph 2: Consider inserting a comma between “months” and “and” as it’s really two imperative sentences.
Page 131, final paragraph: I’d replace the semicolon after “commitment” with a period and break into two separate sentences so they’re easier for the reader to follow.
Page 132, paragraph 1: You can do without “As such” at the beginning of the second sentence.
Pages 132 - 133: See earlier comment about all-hands, and be consistent whatever direction you decide to take.
Page 132, paragraph 4: Instead of a colon, I’d end the sentence after “involved” and begin the next one with “Invite”.
Page 133, paragraph 2: I’d replace the colon after “now” with a comma and lowercase “record”.
Page 133, bio: It’s “Angela” not “Angels” Robertson.

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New Chapter: An Open Leader's Guide to Better Meetings #12