The Context-First Meeting

(Fix the context first, and everything else falls into place)

Most meetings fail for a simple reason:

People enter the same room
with completely different versions of reality.

If you don’t fix that at the outset,
the rest of the meeting becomes:

• circular

• contradictory

• reactive

• repetitive

• and twice as long as it needs to be

Here’s the tool that solves this elegantly.

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⭐ THE CONTEXT-FIRST MEETING

Before discussing anything, align on:

1️⃣ What we know
2️⃣ What changed
3️⃣ What decision we’re trying to make
4️⃣ What constraints we’re operating under

This takes 2–3 minutes.
It saves the next 27.

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⭐ Why It Works

Meetings derail because:

• assumptions differ

• decisions lost their rationale

• updates are interpreted differently

• teams drift asynchronously

• people use the same words to describe different ideas

Context-first alignment rebuilds the shared mental model that the meeting requires.

You can’t skip this step and expect coherence.

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⭐ When to Use It

• Project reviews

• Strategy discussions

• Cross-functional meetings

• Debriefs

• Anywhere people say, “Let’s get aligned”

• Any meeting that tends to drift

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⭐ Example Opening

“Before we dive in, let’s ground ourselves.
Here’s what we know, what’s changed, and what we’re deciding today.”

Instant clarity.
Instant momentum.

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⭐ Try It

At your next meeting, claim the first two minutes and set the context.
People will wonder why no one has been doing this all along.