Most stand-ups are town-hall style, turn-by-turn monologues. They’re not optimized for solving product team problems, which is an incredibly time waste for the vast majority of attendees.

Some PMs use the stand-up to bring up product questions, expecting team members to answer off the dome.

Issues with the daily stand-up:

• Encourages a constant pace of results without accounting for effort required to those ends
• Information shared is generally not useful to everyone
• Decision-making does not occur spontaneously

Here are a few rules for better meetings, gained directly from Elon Musk’s own productivity system for Tesla employees.

1. Avoid large meetings

When there are too many people, people are less likely to share crucial information. There’s also not enough time for people to contribute meaningfully. Large meetings are in general time-sucks that don’t move projects forward.

2. The goal of meetings

There are many reasons for why meetings are a must, but the most important ones are:

1. Collaboration
2. Make urgent decisions
3. Gain relevant information from informed individuals

In essence, great meetings lead to high-quality decision-making. That, in turn, requires a few things:

1. Setting a clear agenda for the meeting