In a nutshell
- 🧠Adopt the ten-word decision question as a visible anchor to induce attention bias, narrow scope, and keep contributions tied to the outcome.
- 🎯 Leverage cognitive mechanics—priming, goal shielding, and deliberate salience—to cut drift, reduce status noise, and raise psychological safety.
- 🛠️ Run the first five minutes differently: confirm the decider, set criteria and a time box, keep the question in view, and track metrics like meeting length and follow-up compliance.
- ⚠️ Avoid pitfalls by countering framing bias, co-authoring the question, rotating roles, adding a “red-team minute,” and designing for hybrid and accessibility needs.
- 🚀 Results: faster meetings, crisper decisions, clearer ownership, and higher follow-through—turning meetings into places where choices actually happen.
Meetings do not fail for lack of intelligence; they fail for lack of attention. The room arrives with emails in mind, half-formed tasks, and social signalling to perform. Attention scatters. Decisions drift. There is, however, a deceptively simple habit that snaps focus into place. Start every meeting by writing a single decision question in ten words on a shared surface and leave it visible to all. That line becomes the compass. It narrows the noise, frames contributions, and shortens detours. When the question is clear, behaviour aligns rapidly and politics recedes. The technique is quick, cheap, and culturally scalable. It also exploits how human brains prioritise salience.
The Simple Habit: The Ten-Word Decision Question
Here is the habit in full: before anyone launches into updates, the chair writes a concise, visible decision question, such as “Approve Q3 pricing tiers for enterprise clients today?” Ten words, maximum. No jargon, no hedging. Then, confirm the decision owner and the time box. That’s it. Keep the sentence in view from first minute to last. You’ll notice something odd and useful: people self-edit. They anchor remarks to the question or drop them. The meeting gathers pace.
This works because it introduces an attention bias toward a single outcome. In practice, the bias reduces digression, asks for evidence tied to criteria, and calibrates who speaks when. The question’s verbs (“approve”, “decide”, “agree”) make the task concrete. Nouns (“pricing tiers”) scope the domain. A temporal cue (“today”) prevents deferral theatre. Clarity is contagious. Inside ten minutes, the room knows why it is assembled, who holds the pen, and what “done” looks like. That shared frame improves both the speed and quality of choices.
How Attention Bias Works in the Room
Human attention is narrow. We notice what is salient, recent, or rewarded. A visible decision question exploits priming: it loads the mind with a target and filters inputs accordingly. The result is not mind control; it is goal shielding. Irrelevant ideas lose energy. Relevant ones feel brighter. Make the target vivid and the room behaves as if it matters. This shift is measurable: shorter turns, fewer topic changes, and clearer synthesis by the chair.
The habit also reduces common distortions. Without an anchor, meetings reward confidence displays and chronology—who spoke last wins. With a shared question, contributions are judged against purpose rather than volume. You’ll still get bias, but it is the useful kind: a deliberate salience bias toward the decision. It also dampens status noise. Junior colleagues can tie their point to the sentence on the wall and be heard on merit. Leaders benefit too: by speaking last, they let the question—not their rank—do the steering. That combination improves psychological safety and rigour.
Practical Setup: Run the First Five Minutes Differently
Make the opening ritual mechanical. Arrive early. Write the ten-word question where all can see—physical whiteboard, shared doc, or slide in a hybrid call. Name the decision owner and the decider. Agree criteria in a single sentence (“must protect margin; cannot delay launch”). Then set a time box and checkpoints. Phones stay face-down. The leader speaks last. Two minutes of silent note-scrub helps introverts prepare. Once the compass is up, every agenda item must prove relevance to it.
Use the following cues to keep momentum: call “Link to the question?” when drift appears; park attractive side-issues; capture assumptions; summarise at natural breaks. Document the final wording of the decision for audit and memory. For teams that like data, track a few indicators for a month.
| Indicator | Before Habit | After Habit |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting length | 60–90 mins average | 35–55 mins average |
| Decision clarity | Ambiguous wording | Single sentence, logged |
| Owner accountability | Diffuse, contested | Named, accepted |
| Follow-up compliance | Spotty | High within 48 hours |
Pitfalls, Equity, and Hybrid Meetings
This is not magic. Poorly framed questions can hardwire the wrong choice. Watch for framing bias (“Approve budget cuts?” versus “Protect growth with a leaner budget?”). Counter it by co-authoring the ten words with at least one dissenting voice and by writing two versions—loss and gain framed—before selecting. Rotate the scribe and the decider to spread influence. Guard against groupthink by scheduling one “red-team minute” before the vote.
Hybrid and remote? Keep the question on screen persistently; never hide it behind shared spreadsheets. Use a shared doc so remote colleagues can point directly. For accessibility, read the question aloud every 15 minutes and after breaks; ensure high-contrast text. For neurodiverse teammates, the stable anchor reduces context switching and fatigue. Leaders should resist “solutioneering” early; ask, “Which criterion does that support?” If a discussion truly needs exploration, rename the meeting: from decision to discovery. The sentence changes, the behaviour changes, and expectations stay honest. The habit scales without bureaucracy because it rides existing calendars, not new software.
Change is rarely glamorous, yet this single adjustment—writing and living by a visible decision question—reclaims time, sharpens debate, and spreads accountability. It nudges attention where it needs to go and keeps it there long enough to decide well. You will feel the difference quickly. Fewer tangents. Crisper summaries. Better follow-through. Meetings become the place where choices happen, not the place where time goes to die. If you tried this for a fortnight, what would you choose as your first ten-word question—and how would you know it worked?
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