Monday, 9:00. Seven people around the table. Maya, the founder, has her laptop open but isn't looking at it.
"Okay," she says. "Pricing. Marcus?"
Marcus runs sales. He spent Sunday on this. He has a slide and a recommendation. He opens his mouth, and then he looks at Maya.
"Enterprise deals keep stalling in procurement," he says. "What do you think we should do?"
Six heads turn to Maya.
She thinks for maybe four seconds. "Drop the annual minimum for year one. We make it back on seats."
Nods around the table. Marcus closes his laptop.
John, her co-founder, leans back. "We tried that in March. Margins went sideways. I'd rather we..."
"I hear you," Maya says. She's already up at the whiteboard. For the next ten minutes, she sells. The market has shifted. Buyers have shifted. This is a land grab, and land grabs reward speed. She is good at this. She is very good at this.
John stops pushing. Marcus writes down Maya's plan. Nobody mentions the slide.
In the hallway afterwards, Lena from product catches up with Marcus. "What was your recommendation?"
Marcus shrugs. "Doesn't matter."
Maya and John are composites, of course. But if you lead a startup, you've probably sat in that room. Maybe in Maya's chair.
Your weekly leadership meeting is teaching your team something. Most of the time, it teaches them to bring you every decision.
That's not because your team is weak. It's because you've been right often enough, and fast enough, that asking you became the shortest path. Every time you answer first, the lesson sticks. The company grows, the questions pile up, and you become the place where work waits.
Try this before your next meeting
Open the notes from your last leadership meeting. Count the decisions that got made. Then count how many of them you made.
If the two numbers are close, it isn't a leadership meeting. It's office hours with an audience.
A 90-minute agenda that moves decisions off your desk
For most startup leadership teams, 90 minutes a week is enough. Here is how I'd spend it.
0-10 minutes: The scoreboard. The few numbers that show whether you're on track for the quarter. Facts only. No stories yet.
10-25 minutes: Last week's promises. Each owner says done, not done, or at risk. No trials.
25-55 minutes: The quarter's one breakthrough. The one barrier that, once gone, changes how fast the business grows. What moved, and what's next.
55-80 minutes: Decisions that cross teams. Only the ones that need the whole team. Owner, options, trade-offs, deadline.
80-90 minutes: Who does what by when. Plus what the rest of the company needs to hear.
Status updates go in writing, the day before. If you can read it on a dashboard, nobody needs to say it out loud.
Your hardest job in the room: don't answer first
When a leader brings a solid recommendation, let them run with it. When it's weak, question the logic. Don't hand over your answer. It will feel slower for a few weeks. Then it gets much faster, because decisions stop waiting for you.
If you're not the founder
Remember Marcus? He had a recommendation and asked a question instead.
Your move is simple. Stop bringing questions. Bring recommendations.
"Pipeline dropped three weeks in a row because partner leads fell off. I want to test a partner bonus for two weeks, with a target of 12 qualified deals." Your founder can approve that in ten seconds.
"What do you think?" is a decision they have to make for you.
The question that changes the meeting
Stop asking, "Why am I still in every decision?" Ask instead, "What about how we work teaches people to send this decision to me?"
Maya's meeting is one scene in a longer movie. Scaling Silicon Valley Style, the book Doug Miller and I wrote, maps the whole thing: what changes at each stage after product-market fit, and what to master next.
You get the full book and three workbooks (Seed, Series A and Series B), online right away. Plus the playbook as AI skills for Claude.
Cancel anytime. Full refund within 30 days.
Roland
P.S. Reply with your count: how many decisions in your last leadership meeting, and how many were yours. I'm curious where most teams land.
