Maintain the Productivity of Your Meetings With a Low Action-to-Decision Ratio
Meetings where decisions are made but no one wants to be in charge are the worst meetings. Keep this action / decision ratio low by ending each meeting with a “responsibility summary” that everyone receives afterwards so everyone knows what they are responsible for.
You can approach this in two ways. Either ask after each decision who will own the next steps, or mark who owns each action item after making a decision during the meeting. If at the end of the meeting there are any decisions left that don’t belong to anyone, ask who will own them (and ideally, not you!). Your overall goal is to achieve an unambiguous balance between decisions made and clear actions in relation to them. Make these decisions so you don’t end up with another meeting in which everyone looks at each other, wondering who should have done what you discussed in the last meeting.