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Elise Keith

lucidmeetings.com

Elise is Lucid Meetings' resident meeting maven and author of Where the Action Is: The Meetings That Make or Break Your Organization. She leads our research, publication, and product management efforts, constantly seeking the best ways to make it easy for people to enjoy meetings that get work done.

Elise's Bona Fide Meeting Maven Credentials Include:

  • Co-founded Lucid Meetings in 2010. Lucid Meetings helps organizations develop and scale effective meeting habits. We conduct original research and collaborate with experts from across sectors to provide education, technology, and consulting services. Our customers say that we put their meetings on science.
  • Over 500,000 people visit Lucid Meetings each year to find answers to their meeting questions. Elise’s insights have been featured in public forums (such as The Greening Government Council of of Alberta’s Thought Leader Series and conference sessions for the International Association of Facilitators), in academic settings (most recently at The Gothenburg Symposium of Meeting Science), and in numerous online publications (from the BBC to CMSWire to the Teamwork Productivity Blog). See more on our news page.
  • Lucid Meetings was recognized by Gartner as a 2017 Cool Vendor in the Unified Communications category, and named to the Constellation ShortList™ for Meeting Management Tools for the second year running.
  • Over 10,000 organizations from across the world use Lucid Meetings agenda templates and software to run more effective, engaging workplace meetings.
  • Before Lucid, Elise spent 12 years in the software industry with roles in leadership, client project management, UX design, Agile product management, sales engineering, training, and client consulting. Over that time, she learned a range of meeting methodologies, covering everything from Agile stand-ups to legal briefings to multi-day committee meetings following Robert’s Rules of Order.
  • She actually reads all the books about meetings. Check out her list on Goodreads.

Templates

 A Framework for Successful Project Retrospectives

How to Run a Project Retrospective This meeting agenda template helps teams learn from project successes and failures together, and commit to change based on what they learned. Use this template as a starting place when designing your next project retrospective, and adapt the agenda to fit your team.
Agile Standup Meeting

How to Run an Agile Standup Meeting Fast, structured, and to-the-point, the agile stand-up is meant to keep a team fully in-synch on fast moving projects. As you might guess from the name, the "stand-up" was originally designed for teams that would stand up together in front of the board where they track their work using sticky notes. Most commonly scheduled as a daily meeting, this meeting...
Cross-Functional Weekly Update

How to Run a Weekly Update Meeting This is the meeting agenda template the team at Lucid Meetings uses to run our weekly meetings. Needless to say, we think this format works pretty darn well. This meeting agenda template brings together leaders from different departments to share updates and reinforce their connections to the company and each other. While definitely work-focused, the tone of...
Daily Leadership Huddle

How to Run a Daily Leadership Huddle The Daily Huddle keeps management teams coordinated, focused, accountable and efficient. Lasting just 10 to 15 minutes, a Daily Huddles ensures everyone knows what’s going on each day. The Huddle also provides a fast way to get quick answers to any cross-functional questions. Use this meeting agenda template as a starting place when planning your team’s...
Formal Board Meeting

How to Run a Board Meeting Boards have many responsibilities and must abide by certain rules and formalities, but there is no one set way to run a board meeting. For every board meeting, the directors must still determine what topics to prioritize, how to manage the available time, and how to ensure the board members arrive informed and stay actively engaged throughout the call. This meeting...
Monthly + Anytime Decision Making

How to Run a Decision-Making Meeting This meeting agenda template explains how to prepare for and run a solid decision making meeting. This straightforward process walks your team through the critical decision making steps. It doesn’t rely on any specific analytical frameworks or fancy group exercises. You can run this meeting as is, or use it as a starting place when building a more elaborate...
Progress, Plans, & Problems

How to Run a Weekly Update Meeting Inspired by the written report format put together by the fine folks at Weekdone, this meeting agenda template adapts the PPP status report into a status meeting where people can discuss the information they share. Used by product teams, technology companies, and entrepreneurs alike, the Progress, Plans & Problems format provides an easy way to communicate...
Project Status Update Meeting

How to Run a Project Status Meeting This meeting agenda template follows a standard format common in organizations with a well-developed Project Management Office. Most commonly scheduled as a weekly or bi-monthly meeting, this format is best suited for those managing cross-functional teams on moderately complex projects or programs.
Quarterly Strategic Refresh

How to Run a Strategic Plan Refresh Meeting During this meeting, teams review their strategic progress and establish targets for the next 90 days. Part retrospective, part working session, and part time-out, running a Quarterly Refresh makes sure your organization’s strategy stays present in everyone’s mind, up-to-date with changes in your environment, and relevant to everyday operations. Use...
Remote Team Check-In

How to Run a Remote Team Check-In Meeting This meeting agenda template is inspired by Wade Foster's blog post about how the distributed team at Zapier keeps their work in synch and their team connected when meeting from different time zones. This meeting agenda template is best suited for small teams (10 or fewer people) who enjoy communicating in writing.
Roberts Rules of Order Standard Order of Business

How to Run a Board Meeting Love, hate, hubris, and anxiety - Robert's Rules inspires strong feelings and opinions in those who have come to know them. Regardless of how anyone might feel about Robert's Rules, we still see this pillar of parliamentary procedure listed as the fall-back in board and organizational bylaws. If in doubt about how to proceed, they say, use Robert's Rules. This Robert'...
Simple Board Meeting

How to Run a Board Meeting Boards have many responsibilities and must abide by certain rules and formalities, but there is no one set way to run a board meeting. For every board meeting, the directors must still determine what topics to prioritize, how to manage the available time, and how to ensure the board members arrive informed and stay actively engaged throughout the call. This meeting...
Startup Board Meeting

How to Run a Board Meeting Boards have many responsibilities and must abide by certain rules and formalities, but there is no one set way to run a board meeting. For every board meeting, the directors must still determine what topics to prioritize, how to manage the available time, and how to ensure the board members arrive informed and stay actively engaged throughout the call. This meeting...
The Essential Project Kickoff Meeting

How to Run a Project Kickoff Meeting This is the meeting agenda template the team at Lucid Meetings uses to run kickoffs for smaller projects. It covers all the basics, and gets everyone involved to create a strong mutual commitment to the project's success. During this meeting, you'll lead two separate discussions using techniques developed by expert facilitators and project managers. Between...
Urgent Problem Solving Meeting

How to Run a Problem Solving Meeting This meeting agenda template helps a team find short-term tactical solutions to an urgent problem. The conversation includes time to gain a shared understanding of the problem, but focuses primarily on listing and evaluating possible solutions and the creation of a short- term action plan. Use this meeting to answer the question: “What are we going to do...
Weekly Leadership Team Meeting

How to Run a Leadership Team Meeting Held at the same time and day each week, teams use this meeting to drive accountability and resolve issues impeding progress. This is an action-oriented working meeting rather than a reporting and information sharing meeting. The agenda leaves no time for reading reports or explaining delays. Instead, the time is spent working through high-priority issues to...