One of the hardest things to do is to get our stakeholders to actually read / prepare / review things ahead of meetings!
There’s nothing like sending out all of the pre-reading - and then turning up to the workshop or meeting knowing that no one has actually bothered to do any prep.
So - does anyone have any tricks to get people to actually do the prep work?? I heard a great one the other day:
Send out the reading with a note asking Jane & Bob to please read Section 5
Then everyone who isn’t Jane or Bob gets so curious that they go and read Section 5 to understand why they weren’t asked to
Does anyone have any tips and tricks for getting maximum engagement ahead of a meeting?
I’ve noticed one of the biggest challenges is that people are simply very time poor, there’s more work than resource, so prep often feels like a luxury.
What’s helped me is being very deliberate about how I frame the pre-reading or prep work. I try to be crystal clear about:
The ask: what exactly do I need from them?
The time commitment: how long it should realistically take. Get as close to 5-15 minutes as possible.
The importance: why this matters to the decision we’re making.
The deadline: ideally in the subject line so it’s visible straight away.
I’ve also changed the way I present material. I used to feel like I should share all the awesome analysis I’d done so far, but I’ve learnt that’s overwhelming when people are under pressure.
Now I try to just surface what’s most specific and relevant to the immediate decision or question at hand. That way, the background is there if needed, but the focus is on what actually requires their input.
Formatting makes a big difference too. I use bullet points and clear headers to signpost the key information, and whenever possible I include a summary, a diagram, or slides. In my organisation, people seem far more likely to engage with slides more than with long documents. A lot of the briefing paper templates that we have start with explicit actions: “Here’s the decision we need to make” or “Here’s the question you’ll be asked to answer.”
It hasn’t solved the problem completely, but I’ve noticed it makes it much easier for people to prioritise the prep work because they can see exactly what’s expected of them and how it links to their role in the meeting.
I think I often fall into the trap of thinking about what I need to show, rather than what they need to engage. When I can flip that, things go better.
Love that tip — the reverse psychology of naming people is genius!
My go-to trick? Just assume nobody has read anything. Rather than hoping the prep happened, I build 5 minutes of silent reading into the start of every meeting. Everyone reads together, right there in the room — then we dive into the discussion with a level playing field.
I actually borrowed this from Jeff Bezos. Amazon famously banned PowerPoint in exec meetings and replaced it with a structured narrative memo. Every meeting starts with everyone silently reading the memo — no one presents it, no one summarises it. It sounds awkward, but it completely changes the quality of the conversation that follows.
The beauty of it: it removes the shame spiral of unprepared attendees, it ensures the discussion is grounded in the actual content, and it respects the effort that went into writing the material in the first place.
Anyone else tried this? Curious how it lands in different organisations.
