---
title: Meeting Architecture and Decision Rights
summary: Install the four meetings that run your business, kill the rest, and give every decision a named decider.
est_minutes: 18
sort: 6
---

Welcome to Module 3.6.

Most operator businesses have too many meetings AND too few of the right meetings. Random standups consume time. Important decisions stall because no meeting was scheduled to make them.

By the end of this module you'll have a 4-meeting architecture, a Decision Rights Matrix, and a meeting audit that kills the wrong meetings.

**The Meeting Problem**

Operator businesses fall into two failure patterns:

**Pattern A: Too many meetings.** Daily standups. Weekly 1:1s with everyone. Project meetings on every project. Random "sync" calls. By month 6, half the team's week is in meetings.

**Pattern B: Too few meetings.** Async-everything culture. No standing reviews. No financial review cadence. Important decisions stuck in 3-week Slack threads. By month 12, the business is drifting.

Most operator businesses are Pattern A. The fix isn't to swing to Pattern B. It's to install the RIGHT meetings and kill the rest.

The right architecture has 4 meetings. Not 14. Not 0. Four.

**The 4-Meeting Architecture**

**Meeting 1: Weekly Tactical (60 min)**

- When: Same day every week (usually Monday)
- Attendees: Founder + leads (Revenue, Delivery, Operations from Module 3.3)
- Agenda:
  - 5 min: KPIs at a glance
  - 15 min: Top 3 priorities for the week
  - 25 min: Blockers + open issues
  - 10 min: Cross-team coordination
  - 5 min: Action items + owners

Purpose: keep the week's operations moving. Not for strategy. Not for retrospectives.

**Meeting 2: Monthly Operating Review (90 min)**

- When: 5th of every month
- Attendees: Founder + finance + Revenue Lead + Delivery Lead
- Agenda: from Module 3.4

Purpose: financial visibility, decisions on margin / pricing / hiring triggers.

**Meeting 3: Quarterly Strategic (4 hours)**

- When: First Friday of new quarter
- Attendees: Founder + all leads
- Agenda:
  - Review last quarter's plan vs actual
  - Set 90-day OKRs / goals
  - Hiring trigger check
  - Tech stack quarterly review
  - SOP quarterly review (Module 3.2)
  - Customer health portfolio review

Purpose: zoom out. Make decisions weekly/monthly meetings can't make.

**Meeting 4: Annual Off-site (2 days)**

- When: Once per year, off-site location
- Attendees: Founder + leads + key team
- Agenda:
  - 4-pillar plan review (Pillars 1–4 deliverables status)
  - Annual vision + strategic priorities
  - Leadership development conversations
  - Culture + values check

Purpose: the truly big stuff. Direction-setting for the year.

Four meetings. Together they consume roughly 14 hours per month from the founder. That's the operating cadence.

**Everything Else Gets Killed Or Downgraded**

Once these 4 are in place, audit the rest. For each existing recurring meeting:

- Does this meeting make a decision that one of the 4 architecture meetings could make? → Kill it.
- Does this meeting share status that could be a 5-min async update? → Downgrade to async.
- Is this meeting a 1:1 that could happen monthly instead of weekly? → Downgrade frequency.
- Does this meeting solve a real ongoing problem? → Keep it, but document why.

Most operators kill 40–60% of their recurring meetings in this module. That time goes back to actual work.

**Exception:** 1:1s with direct reports stay. They're not in the 4-meeting operating architecture but they're a separate management ritual. Monthly to bi-weekly is the right cadence for most. Weekly 1:1s are usually over-investment.

**Decision Rights**

A meeting without decision rights is a coffee chat with a calendar invite.

Every meaningful decision in the business has 4 things:

1. **Who decides** — one named human (not "the team")
2. **Who is consulted** — must give input before the decision
3. **Who is informed** — gets the decision after
4. **Speed** — same-day / this week / before next MOR / quarterly

For the 20 most common decisions in an operator business, build a Decision Rights Matrix. For each decision below, capture who decides, who is consulted, who is informed, and the expected speed:

- Pricing change on existing customer
- New deal scope outside standard tier
- Hire (within plan)
- Hire (outside plan)
- Fire / let go
- Vendor renewal > $500/mo
- Tool adoption
- Customer offboarding
- Refund > $1K
- Brand / marketing message
- Quarterly OKRs
- Annual budget
- Office / location
- Legal / contract terms (non-standard)
- Partnership / referral agreement
- New service line
- Service line discontinuation
- Customer escalation (formal complaint)
- PTO policy / benefits
- Equity / profit-share

The matrix is the answer to "who decides X?" Asked once. Documented. Never debated again.

**How To Run The 4 Meetings Well**

Three rules that apply to all 4 meeting types:

**Rule 1: Pre-read required.**

Every meeting has a pre-read. Numbers, dashboard, agenda. Sent 24 hours before. Attendees read before the meeting. If you didn't read the pre-read, you can attend but you can't drive any decisions.

**Rule 2: Decisions documented in-meeting.**

Every decision made gets written down in the meeting itself, with: what was decided, who decided, who was consulted. The notes go to the team within 24 hours.

**Rule 3: Action items have named owners and dates.**

"We'll think about it" is not an action item. "Sarah will draft the customer outreach script by Friday" is. Without owners and dates, nothing happens between meetings.

**What To Do Right Now**

Four things:

1. **Audit your current meetings** (Section A of the workbook). List every recurring meeting on your calendar.

2. **Apply the 4-bucket framework** (kill / downgrade / keep / new).

3. **Schedule the 4 architecture meetings** for the next 12 months. Calendar them now.

4. **Build the Decision Rights Matrix** (Section C) for at least 15 of the 20 decisions listed.

Take the quiz.

I'll see you in Module 3.7 — Operating Reviews & Performance Management — the final Pillar 3 module, which ties everything in Pillar 3 together into a self-running operating system.
