◂ Help Center

Run Your First Meeting

A 45-minute agenda that ends with roles assigned, one action chosen, and a logged record. No Robert's Rules, no three-hour slog.

Organizer Organizing updated Jun 27, 2026

A meeting that doesn’t end in a decision is just a support group with worse snacks. This is a tight, forty-five-minute agenda that gets you from “we’re all mad” to “here’s what we’re doing, and here’s who’s doing it.”

Before you start

  • Meet somewhere the boss isn’t: a break room off the clock, someone’s kitchen, a library room, a parking lot.
  • Phones face-down and silent. The point of meeting in person is that no platform is in the room.
  • Someone volunteers to facilitate (keep time) and someone to keep the log (write decisions down).

The agenda

  1. Name the grievance—10 min. Go around the room. Everyone says, in one sentence, the thing that brought them. Find the version everyone shares.
  2. Reality check—10 min. What do we actually know? Who else is affected? What has management already said? Separate facts from rumors.
  3. Assign the three rotating roles—5 min. Facilitator, logkeeper, sentinel (add a treasurer only if you’ll handle money). They rotate in thirty days, so nobody’s locked in. See Roles & Rotation.
  4. Pick ONE first action—15 min. Small and winnable. A question delivered to management by three people instead of one. A signed letter. A single coordinated ask. Winning small builds the trust you need to win big.
  5. Log and schedule—5 min. The logkeeper records the decisions and the owner of each. Set the next meeting before anyone leaves.

Facilitation rules that keep it flat

  • Nobody runs the meeting twice in a row. Rotate the chair.
  • Loudest voice doesn’t win. The facilitator’s job is to pull in the quiet people, not to referee a debate between the two who always talk.
  • Decisions get logged, not whispered. If it isn’t in the log, it didn’t happen.

What “done” looks like

You leave with: one named grievance, four roles assigned, one action with an owner, a logged record, and a date for next time. That’s a functioning Orbit.

Next