Meetings That Decide ThingsMeetings That Decide Things. Everybody complains about meetings. Almost nobody measures the skill of running one that ends in a decision.
This measures whether you turn a meeting into a decision that holds: naming what the hour is for, getting the real objection into the room, saying how the decision will be made, and closing with a named owner and a date. The report is one if-then sentence and the evidence that chose it.
A report that is one sentence, and the exercise that produced it
Twenty situations you have actually sat in. A recurring hour with no stated purpose. A colleague who raises a concern and then goes quiet. Twenty minutes spent on facts everybody already had. A decision reopened for the third time with nothing new. A meeting that ends in agreement with no name against anything. A date left as soon. Four further exercises ask something harder: of six things somebody could say about a decision, which three would actually change it - because a vivid story, a general truth and a strongly-held opinion all feel like evidence and none of them could have come out the other way.
Every option credits one competency, sometimes two, never four. That sounds like bookkeeping and it is the difference between a report that tells you four things and one that tells you the same thing four times: if every option counted towards every heading, the four readings would agree with each other almost perfectly. Sixty-three of the eighty option credits here name a single area, and the report publishes that figure so you can check the claim rather than take it.
Then the report does something unusual with the space a score normally occupies. It gives you one if-then sentence, boxed and alone, chosen from the area where your answers sat furthest from the key and from the single exercise inside it where the distance was widest - and it prints that exercise underneath, with what you chose and what a stronger answer did, so the recommendation is an argument you can disagree with rather than an instruction. Implementation intentions carry a meta-analytic effect around d = 0.65 across ninety-four studies, which is larger than most of the training a report could recommend instead, and in practice the if-then line is the only part of a report anybody acts on.
What you walk away with
A specific act in a recognisable moment, chosen from your own weakest exercise. Not a resolution to be better at meetings, which is the version that has never worked.
The situation, what you picked, what a stronger answer did, and the reasoning behind both — so the recommendation can be argued with.
Deliberately not given equal weight. Three plans at once is the same as no plan; the mechanism is one situation triggering one act with no decision in between.
Lowest first, against the typical respondent rather than against a pass mark. No radar and no number, because eight exercises cannot support one.
How often you treated a finding as evidence when it would have come out the same either way — the single most useful thing a meeting habit can fix.
Inside your report
Illustrative sample - your report is generated from your own responses.
If somebody raises a concern and then goes quiet, then I will say their concern back and ask them to finish it before we move on.
Chosen from the single exercise where your answer sat furthest from the key, and printed with that exercise underneath.
Built for
- Anyone who runs or sits in meetings and suspects the hour is not ending in a decision — analysts, engineers, coordinators, project people, team leads
- L&D teams who want a measure of meeting and decision skill rather than another course on agendas
- Managers and facilitators who want a specific behaviour to change this week rather than a competency to develop this year
Find out what one thing would change your meetings this week
32 scored exercises - about 36 minutes - a full bespoke report built around one if-then sentence, the exercise that chose it, and four capabilities sorted lowest first.
₹649 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
Whether you turn a meeting into a decision that holds: naming what the meeting is for, getting the real objection into the room, saying how the decision will be made, and closing with a named owner and a date. It does not measure your confidence, your seniority, how much you talk, how well you present, or how likeable you are.
No. It is a working skill and it is written for anybody who sits in meetings, at any level. Several of the situations are from the position of somebody who did not call the meeting and does not chair it - the peer who was told the objection privately, the person invited to a meeting of eighteen with a one-word agenda, the attendee watching a decision get reopened for the third time.
Because that is the part people act on. An implementation intention - a specific situation paired with a specific act - carries a meta-analytic effect around d = 0.65 across ninety-four studies, larger than most training a report could recommend. The three writing rules that make it work are built into the plan library rather than left to chance: the situation is a recognisable moment, the plan names a replacement behaviour rather than a suppression, and it is one small act rather than a competency.
Each option carries an effectiveness value and a sparse construct-credit vector, so a competency is scored only from the options that genuinely evidence it, against the best value those options actually offered. Every figure is then corrected against the declared per-option choice rates, because a graded partial-credit percentage sits near half by construction and an uncorrected version would put nearly everybody in the middle band.
Rs 649 in India including GST, or US$6.99 elsewhere, one time, for one full sitting and report. Facilitation courses are sold per seat and teach; meeting-analytics tools measure calendar time rather than judgment; and the free meeting-effectiveness quizzes are self-report with no key behind them. Organisations can use AssessAll credits at 15 credits per person.
Each one takes a single capability, puts you inside the situations where it is actually tested, and scores your choices against published evidence — with a report designed for that capability alone, not a template. They span hiring, compliance, education, operations and personal skill.
Browse the catalogue →Methodology: Measures whether a person turns a meeting into a decision that holds, through original situational, sorting and self-report items keyed to published constructs. Construct statement: it measures whether a person turns a meeting into a decision that holds - naming what the meeting is for, getting the real objection into the room, saying how the decision will be made, and closing with a named owner and a date - and it does not measure confidence, seniority, how much a person talks, presentation skill, or how likeable they are. Declared response instruction: behavioural tendency throughout - every situational stem asks what the respondent is most likely to do rather than what a person should do, because instructed-knowledge framing is the more fakeable of the two. Item format: twenty four-option situational items in which every option is an action a capable professional could defend and the spread between them is degree; four balanced diagnosticity sorts, each listing six things someone could say or find about a pending decision, three of which could have come out the other way and three of which sound weighty while leaving the answer where it already was; and eight balanced-keyed self-check statements about the respondent's own meeting habits, half worded so that agreement is not the flattering answer. Scoring is construct-weighted graded situational judgment: each option carries a graded partial-credit weight and a sparse per-option construct-credit vector of one or two competencies, so a response feeds the competencies it actually evidences rather than only the item's headline label; option-level credit is chance-corrected against authored per-option base rates before any band is assigned, so a competency is not credited for a choice most respondents would make anyway. Construct areas drawn on: research on decision quality in groups and the shared-information bias, where groups spend their discussion on what everyone already knows; the common-knowledge effect and its cost to accuracy; psychological safety and voice behaviour as the condition under which an objection reaches the room; the advocacy-versus-inquiry distinction in group problem solving; devil's-advocate and dissent research, including the finding that assigned dissent underperforms genuine dissent; premortem and prospective-hindsight work on surfacing risk before commitment; the diagnosticity principle in evidence evaluation, that a finding is worth its weight only if it could have come out the other way; escalation of commitment and the sunk-cost effect in group decisions; research on decision rules and the difference between consultation and consensus; implementation intentions and if-then planning as the link between agreement and action; and meeting-design research on agenda, size, and the relationship between attendance and satisfaction. All items are original works, no trademarked instrument or branded methodology is named or reproduced, and no affiliation with any source is claimed. AssessAll original design.