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The kickoff meeting I stopped running after a 2pm Tuesday blowup
For two years I ran every new client kickoff as a 90 minute slide walkthrough. I thought more detail meant fewer surprises. Then last month a client in Phoenix stopped me at slide 12 and said, 'We hired you for results, not a lecture.' That hit me hard. Now I send the deck ahead and use the meeting just to nail down deliverables and deadlines. Has anyone else found that cutting the presentation time actually cuts scope arguments later?
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david9201mo ago
The slide deck becomes a crutch after a while, you hide behind it so you don't have to actually talk to people. Sending it ahead forces everyone to come with real questions instead of zoning out while you click through. And honestly, the scope arguments usually happen because nobody wrote down the concrete deadlines in plain English during the meeting. Once you strip the presentation down to just dates and deliverables, there's no wiggle room for someone to claim they thought something else was included. The clients who actually read the deck are the ones who end up respecting your time more, and the ones who don't read it were never going to pay attention to the slides anyway. Your Phoenix client did you a favor, that's the kind of honest feedback most people never get.
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