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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a fun way to determine how big his teams that have meetings should be. “We try to create teams that are no larger than can be fed by two pizzas,” said Bezos. “We call that the two-pizza team rule.” Other meeting rules at Amazon include no PowerPoints (yes to well-written long memos) and starting meetings by reading the memos in silence.

One rule mentioned by longtime Jobs collaborator Ken Segall in his book Insanely Simple was that Jobs kept meetings as lean as possible. Anyone who didn’t have a great reason to be at the meeting was excused. Jobs was similarly tough with himself and declined to join a group of tech leaders at a meeting requested by President Barack Obama citing too much crowd. Jobs held an accountability mindset and hence had a person who was the directly responsible individual, or DRI in Applespeak, for every meeting or agenda.

The COO of Facebook reportedly brings a spiral-bound notebook with her to every meeting. It has a list of everything on the agenda. Sandberg crosses off each task one by one and it has been reported that “if every item is done 10 minutes into an hourlong meeting, the meeting is over”. Sandberg also reported using a notebook to make personalised notes on her colleagues to help be a better mentor. In an interview, David Fisher, a colleague of Sandberg, said, “A key part of what Sheryl does in her life is helping people advance, to be seen, and to be heard.”

The CEO of Nike doodles in meetings to stay focused and to brainstorm creatively. Parker reportedly brings a Moleskine notebook to every meeting. The left pages of the book contain business brainstorming while the right pages contain designs, which is Parker’s way to balance the company’s design and business needs. He said, “Most of us are out of balance, and that’s OK, but you need to keep your eye on the overall equilibrium to be successful.”

In 2011, Larry Page re-took the reins of Google as the CEO and reportedly sent out a company-wide email about how to make meetings more effective. In addition to keeping meetings as small as possible, Page said that every meeting should have a decision maker. Page also urged the company to not wait for meetings to make decisions, and if a meeting was essential to move forward, it must take place immediately.