I started using the Forgotten Algorithm as a way to make meetings more useful.
What I didn’t expect was how much it would teach me about myself and about the people sitting around the table.
At its core, the Forgotten Algorithm nudges us to slow down and ask the questions we assume we already know the answers to. In meetings, that simple shift changes everything.
The first thing it taught me about myself was how quickly I jump to conclusions. I realized how often I thought I knew where a conversation was going, what the problem was, or what the “right” answer should be. Leveraging the direction of the algorithm forced me to pause and ask, “Tell me what good looks like.”
That one question exposed how much of my confidence was actually assumption, not clarity. It also showed me how easily I confuse activity with progress. Meetings are full of motion ; slides, data, opinions, urgency.
The Forgotten Algorithm reminded me to look for direction instead. Not “What can we do?” but “What are we actually trying to solve?” When I stayed disciplined, I noticed fewer clever answers and more meaningful ones including my own. What surprised me most was what it revealed about other people.
When I stopped rushing to solutions and instead asked people to describe their thinking, something shifted. People became more thoughtful. Quieter voices emerged. Defensiveness softened.
It turns out many “difficult” meeting dynamics aren’t about resistance, they’re about people being asked to agree to a destination that was never clearly named. I also learned how rarely we check whether we’re even solving the same problem. Two people can nod in agreement while holding completely different pictures of success.
The Forgotten Algorithm made that visible and fixable. In the end, the biggest lesson was this: good meetings aren’t about smarter people or better answers.
They’re about better questions, asked in the right direction. And often, the hardest part isn’t changing how others show up, it’s noticing our own habits when we sit down at the table.
Good enough clarity, it turns out, beats the perfect meeting every time.