Practice10 min read

60-Second Pre-Meeting Briefings

When you have ten minutes, not ten hours

Not every meeting comes with the luxury of full prep. Sometimes a calendar pops up, someone forwarded you onto a thread you've never seen, and you have 60 seconds to figure out who's who and what they want.

This is exactly where AI is most useful — and most underused.

The 5-bullet briefing

A briefing isn't a report. It's the five things you'd want a friend to whisper in your ear before you join the call:

What is this meeting actually about? (Beyond the title)

Who's in the room and what does each person care about?

What's the most likely decision or ask?

What might they ask me?

What's one question I could ask that shows I'm prepared?

When you ask AI for a briefing, ask for those five — explicitly.

Feed AI what you have, even if it's a mess. Paste the Slack thread, the previous meeting notes, the email forward. Don't summarize first — that's AI's job. Your job is to gather the raw material and ask the right question.

Practice Exercise

Your boss just added you to a 30-minute meeting starting in 10 minutes. The invite says "Catch-up: customer expansion options." You're the new project manager on this account. You've never met the customer (TechCorp). You have access to: the last status email (where TechCorp's contact mentioned wanting to expand seats but flagged budget tightness), the most recent customer call notes (where their VP joined and asked about volume discounts), and an internal Slack thread (where your account team has been debating whether to lead with a discount or a value-add bundle). Write the prompt to get a fast briefing for this meeting.

No pressure — just give it your best shot! Write a prompt for the scenario above and our AI will give you friendly, specific feedback on how to improve.

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(try writing your own prompt first!)