The champion with all the answers gets a quiet room
Month two, Dr. Reese brings thirty-one slides and the meeting ends nine minutes early. Month five, she brings three columns and a question, and the room does the work.
The 60-second version
Month two, Dr. Reese reports on the rollout with thirty-one slides. Everyone sits there, someone asks if they're on track, the meeting ends nine minutes early and nothing changes. Month five, same meeting, no deck: three columns on the board, wins, blockers, decide, and one win and one blocker from everyone. Maria's afternoon-instead-of-four-days story wakes the room up, the room solves Dr. Patel's blocker, and three decisions leave with names attached. Five rules: give the meeting a purpose, use concrete numbers, name the wins, surface what's blocked, and if it's just information, cancel it and send an email.
7:11 · Published November 10, 2026 · With Poppy & Dave
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In this episode
Month two of the rollout, Wednesday at four. Dr. Reese is running her monthly Medtrics meeting, and she's prepared. Very prepared. Thirty-one slides. Slide six is a screenshot of the evaluations dashboard with arrows, circles and, for reasons nobody remembers, a pie chart. Dr. Patel is checking his phone under the table. Maria is catching up on work. Everyone else is politely watching Dr. Reese demonstrate that she is completely on top of the rollout. Finally someone asks, “So we're on track?” “We're on track.” The meeting ends nine minutes early. Everyone leaves, and absolutely nothing changes.
Dr. Reese thought her job was to report on the rollout. So she brought the numbers, the screenshots, the updates, and she answered the questions. Which accidentally gave everyone else a very simple job: sit there. The meeting looked organized, but the room wasn't doing any work.
Dr. Reese's monthly Medtrics meeting. Same room, same people, three months apart.
“I have thirty-one slides to look at today.”
Arrows, circles, a pie chart. Someone asks if they're on track, she says yes, and the meeting ends nine minutes early. Nothing changes.
“Let's go around. One win since we last met, one blocker you're stuck on. Two minutes each. Maria, win.”
No deck. Three columns on the board: wins, blockers, decide. The full forty-five minutes, and three decisions with names attached.
By month five she changed the format. Same meeting, no slide deck. She isn't standing at the front; she's sitting at the table, and on the board are three columns: wins, blockers, decide. She lays out what they need to accomplish, then, instead of telling the room everything she knows, asks what they know. One win, one blocker, two minutes each. Maria finished the July rotation block without a single phone call; last year it took four days, this year an afternoon. Now the room is interested, and people start taking notes. Dr. Patel's blocker: three faculty still emailing him evaluations as Word documents, and he doesn't know how to push back without turning it into a fight. The old Dr. Reese would have answered. Instead she asks the room, “Has anybody dealt with that?” Hands go up. One faculty member explains what worked in her division. Dr. Patel writes it down.
The meeting runs the full forty-five minutes and ends with three things in the decide column that somebody is going to own by next week, with names attached. Dr. Reese moved from broadcaster to facilitator. The room got louder because the room had things to say and finally had a format that let them say it. The room knows things: Maria knows what saved her three days, other faculty know what they've already tried. If Dr. Reese spends forty-five minutes talking, none of that gets into the meeting. Stop asking, what am I going to present? Start asking, what does this room need to accomplish?
“Your champion meeting shouldn't sound like a presentation. It should sound like people figuring something out together.”
Poppy
What the work is for
Maria
Built the July rotation block in an afternoon instead of four days, and now the whole room wants to know how she did it.
Dr. Patel
Leaves knowing how to handle three faculty still emailing Word documents, from a colleague who already solved it.
The room
Three things in the decide column, each with a name, owned by next week. Nine hours of people's time spent on something an email couldn't do.
Say this
You open your next champion meeting, without a slide deck
“Let's go around. One win since we last met, one blocker you're stuck on. Two minutes each.”
12. Small Wins and Storytelling
Premieres November 17, 2026