John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Personal Success

Idea 85: Always follow up with action points

Good follow-up is just as important as the meeting itself. Peter Drucker and I once discussed this very point over a working lunch on strategic leadership. Peter instanced Alfred Sloan as an exemplar of best practice. Sloan, who headed General Motors from the 1920s until the 1950s, was, he told me, ‘the most effective business executive I have known’.

Sloan announced the purpose at the beginning of a formal meeting. Then he listened. He rarely spoke except to clarify a misunderstanding and never took notes. He summed up at the end, thanked the participants and left. Immediately afterward he wrote a short memo to all attendees summarizing the discussion and its conclusions, listing the work assignments ...