For most of our early careers, the cofounders of MeetingResult were stuck in conference rooms just like yours. We sat through unproductive, unplanned, unstandardized and over-attended meetings that drove ambiguous outcomes while consuming a lot of our "real work" time. We saw action items, decisions and ideas spark to life only to fade from a lack of meeting follow-up and accountability. And we naively accepted the status quo of meeting performance believing "that's just the way it is." However, as we grew in our careers as leaders and project management professionals, we realized a desperate need to change the status quo of our own meetings. Like a saw to a carpenter, great business meetings are an essential tool that project managers use to deliver successful projects. We witnessed our share of failed projects and we knew if we didn't sharpen our tools and techniques, our projects would follow the common path of failure (that is, over budget, behind schedule, missed objectives). We started by developing a meeting process that optimized our project performance. We were focused on bringing the highest level of clarity, accountability and effectiveness to our own meetings. We did extensive research, modeled the best meeting leaders and continued to improve our process through trial and error. We extensively studied what works (and what doesn't) and we applied these principles firsthand to deliver results in conference rooms and boardrooms just like yours. We received recognition and promotions largely in part to our ability to run great business meetings. After decades of experience managing literally thousands of meetings, we decided it was time to share this knowledge that revolutionized our professional lives. We packaged our meeting process into a powerfully simple meeting (PSM) system that will enable you and your organization to conduct fewer, faster, more-focused meetings. Whether in a project, sales or operations environment, it gives us great satisfaction to see leaders implement our meeting process and reap the benefits that virtually anyone can achieve if they consistently follow the principles and processes described in this book.