Invite the Right Amount People to Your Meeting with the 8-18-1800 Rule

By Marta Colomer

It’s tough to find the sweet spot of just the right quantity of people in a meeting. Too many and nothing gets done. Too few and… nothing gets done.

Harvard Business Review’s book Running Meetings suggests a helpful rule of thumb for determining how many people to include in a meeting using the 8-18-1800 rule:

If you have to solve a problem or make a decision, invite no more than 8 people. If you have more participants, you may receive so much conflicting input that it’s difficult to deal with the problem or make the decision at hand.

If you want to brainstorm, then you can go as high as 18 people.

If the purpose of the meeting is for you to provide updates, invite however many people need to receive the updates. However, if everyone attending the meeting will be providing updates, limit the number of participants to no more than 18.

If the purpose of the meeting is for you to rally the troops, go for 1,800—or more!

It’s worth taking this approach a step further and actually explaining to your invitees, whether in the meeting invite, in separate conversations, or in your introduction during the meeting itself, why you’ve included them. When each person in a meeting knows why they’re there, and thereby what value they’re bringing to the table (literally), they’re much more motivated to participate productively. It’s an especially key step to take during hectic or pressured times when people’s time is more precious than ever.

It’s up to you, the meeting organizer, to invite the right amount of people and then make the case for why your invitees should devote this chunk of valuable time to the matter at hand. When you do them that courtesy, they’ll return it with their intellectual output.

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