It is then important to give people 1-2 minutes to think and craft their statement. Do not collect right away, as it might crowd out the people who are quieter. After that, collect the statements and have the group discuss potential conflicts in their expectations and involve them in prioritizing. Only then is a good time to go into the actual content with full focus.

It Turns the Time Limit into a Resource
It directly uses the meeting time limitation and turns it into a potential resource to help everyone focus. People are remarkably resourceful in moderating their own expectations on what can reasonably be achieved in a certain time limit.

It helps define and unearth everyone’s definition of value
It speaks to the wish of the participants to ensure that their presence in the meeting creates more value for them than other activities (everyone makes their own opportunity cost calculation!).

It makes people feel heard (and hopefully also understood)
It allows everyone to express their assumptions and values. Make no mistake: people come to the meeting with different viewpoints and they want to feel respected for those. It is almost prerequisite for most people to be ready to listen to others in the first place. Feeling that your most important worry might not get addresses will also be a major distraction.

It gets people used to talking
It’s strange but I observed it is very powerful to give everyone in a meeting a quick opportunity to talk in the very beginning (that also means your ideal meeting size should not go far beyond the ideal 3-7 participants). Especially for those of us who are quieter, it offers just the right gentle, supportive push to allow for more contribution. It’s an effective technique to tap more deeply into the diversity of thinking in the group. Break the uncomfortable ice.

It primes people to focus
The requirement for ’10 words or less’ is no coincidence. You want to set a standard right away how people communicate with brevity and clarity. This is especially important in short meetings, as we do not want any participant to ‘hog’ the mic for seemingly endless monologues and declarations.

Now you might say that this itself will cost a lot of time. And yes, it may take 5 minutes to facilitate this activity and by its nature, it is an investment into the effectiveness of the meeting. To understand that impact, we can ask ourselves 2 simple questions:

1. What’s the worst thing that could happen if we do this?
In my mind, we might bring up extremely different expectations and definitions of meeting success. We might even debate at a greater length in the beginning what constitutes a good outcome. However, I do not see that as a negative. Quite the contrary: If we had just run over it, it would have bitten us later and likely resulted in endless email chains and subsequent meetings to clarify misunderstandings. You essentially invest 5 minutes now to save a lot of time later.

2. What’s the best thing that could happen if we do this?
People get heard on their expectations. People moderation their expectations. People had a chance to practice the micro-culture of this short meeting, which is to contribute with brevity and clarity.

It’s a simple question with a big impact.