by Drew Guarini

Brilliant. Polarizing. Revolutionary. Enigmatic. There’s no shortage of adjectives that have been used to describe the conflicting character and unarguable innovation of the late Steve Jobs. But one thing beyond dispute is his success while manning the ship at Apple. One way Jobs was able to excel while growing and leading one of the world’s most powerful companies was by getting — and demanding — the very best out of the employees he surrounded himself with.

And in many cases, that came through meetings. So for those who argue that the meeting is a useless, dying practice, here are six ways in which Jobs found ways to make meetings a sparkplug to “Think Different.”

1. Keep meetings as small as possible.

Unlike your Super Bowl party, “the more the merrier” is not always a truism for meetings, and Jobs understood this. In Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success, longtime Jobs collaborator Ken Segall recalls an anecdote that symbolized Jobs’ desire to keep meetings constrained to only the most necessary team members:

“‘First off, let’s talk about iMac—’ He [Jobs] stopped cold. His eyes locked on to the one thing in the room that didn’t look right. Pointing to Lorrie, he said, ‘Who are you?’

 Lorrie was a bit stunned to be called out like that, but she calmly explained that she’d been asked to attend because she was involved with some of the marketing projects we’d be discussing. Steve heard it. Processed it. Then he hit her with the Simple Stick. ‘I don’t think we need you in this meeting, Lorrie. Thanks,’ he said. Then, as if that diversion had never occurred—and as if Lorrie never existed—he continued with his update.”

In addition to slimming down the meeting, Jobs also freed up “Lorrie” to work on tasks where her time might be more valuable.

But Jobs’ disdain for overcrowded meetings wasn’t limited to within the walls of Apple headquarters in Cupertino. In the mega-bio, Jobs, author Walter Isaacson writes that Jobs declined an invitation to President Obama’s meeting with a slew of tech titans because he thought Obama had invited too many people.

2. Assign “DRIs.”

As we’ve noted previously, one way to ensure a truly unproductive meeting is by leaving uncertainty as to what the meeting is about or what attendees have to prepare for the meeting. Jobs wanted no part of this — and he had simple fixes to establish accountability. Every meeting had a list of tasks, or an “action list,” and next to each action was a “DRI,” or the “directly responsible individual,” who would be in charge of completing the task. Apart from sharpening the focus of the meeting, this also created a language within Apple: “Who’s the DRI on that?” became a common question for when employees were trying to find the right point of contact on a project.

3. Ban formal presentations.

Formal presentations — the dreaded PowerPoint — can go wrong in myriad ways, from technological issues to bland delivery. For Jobs, however, these types of presentations were devoid of value because of their tendency to hide an employee’s emotional attachment to a project and their true grasp of a subject. During weekly meetings, with executives or the marketing and advertising teams, Jobs would allow debate to flow freely without an agenda, banning slideshows and formal presentations.

Without the crutch of these presentations, employees are forced to think more critically about their ideas and defend them more passionately. In the words of Jobs himself in Jobs:

“’I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,’ Jobs recalled. ‘People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.’”

4. Crowdsource in unexpected ways.

During stints with the NeXT computer company in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Jobs brought along his meeting wizardry from Apple in new ways. In an interview with Business Insider, Ken Rosen, who worked with Jobs at Apple and NeXT, revealed an interesting challenge Jobs once posted to his NeXT employees. The ask was simple — bring in a product you respect, any product — but the purpose was more complex.

While employees brought in everything from paper clips or jump rope to electronics, the idea wasn’t to bring in the most interesting product, but rather to force employees to think about why the product was unique and ignite their thought process for unorthodox design. “It was a sharing exercise, not an evaluation of the person or product,” Rosen told Business Insider. “But if he was dismissive of something, the person could tell. Steve didn’t bother hiding his reactions — and no one would have wanted him to.”

5. Place emphasis on face-to-face meetings.

Sometimes, you just have to kick it old school. You know, like, talk to people. In person. Not on Gchat.

The face-to-face meeting opens up a few doors. For one, it’s harder to hide behind excuses when someone can’t delay their reply. For another, the designation of tasks can be more direct and easier to explain face-to-face than over the Internet. And finally, you can really try and read into how someone feels about something.

According to Isaacson, Jobs “loved” face-to-face meetings. He wrote:

“He [Jobs] said in this digital age when we think we can do things by email and Skype and online chats, it’s really important to bump into people face to face, to hash things out, to look them in the eye, to yell at them and scream at them, and then to hug them and to know emotionally what they’re thinking.”

6. Demonstrate consistency.

While routine can lead to complacency, Jobs made sure that meetings held week after week served a purpose that would lead employees to examine the past while tinkering toward the future. With a consistent structure in place, employees can come to meetings prepared to contribute, while still able to apply lessons from previous meetings. And in the case of Jobs, a little wrinkle from week to week to keep the group on its toes can never hurt.

As Jobs himself said, in a 2008 interview with Fortune:

“So what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. We look at what we sold the week before. We look at every single product under development, products we’re having trouble with, products where the demand is larger than we can make. All the stuff in development, we review. And we do it every single week. I put out an agenda — 80% is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week. We don’t have a lot of process at Apple, but that’s one of the few things we do just to all stay on the same page.”

Image Credit: segagman