Tool
Are Your 1:1s Actually Working?
Eight questions on whether your one-on-ones are doing anything, and what it costs when they aren't. No account, no email.
What makes a one-on-one effective?
An effective one-on-one happens reliably, is shaped by the person you're meeting rather than only by you, carries its action items forward until they're closed, and covers where someone is heading rather than only what they're working on. Most one-on-ones fail on the third of those.
Why 1:1s decay instead of failing
Nobody cancels their one-on-ones. They just move one when the week is busy, then skip one when someone's traveling, then start running them as status updates because that's what fits in the time left.
That decay is hard to notice from inside it. Every individual decision is reasonable, and there's no point at which the meeting stops happening. What changes is what it produces, and that isn't on anyone's calendar.
This is why a health check is worth running periodically even when nothing feels wrong. The question isn't whether the meetings happen. It's whether anything survives them.
The four dimensions
| Dimension | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Follow-through | 30 | Whether anything carries between meetings |
| Consistency | 25 | Whether they reliably happen |
| Growth | 25 | Whether anything beyond status gets discussed |
| Ownership | 20 | Whether the other person shapes the agenda |
Follow-through (30 points)
Weighted highest, which is the opinionated part. Most advice about one-on-ones weights consistency first, but a manager who holds every meeting and loses every action item has a worse system than one who occasionally reschedules and never drops a thread. Consistency measures attendance. Follow-through measures whether the meeting does anything.
What happens to action items between meetings?
- Nothing formal0
- Written down, inconsistently followed up10
- Carried forward until closed20
Do you review open items at the start of each 1:1?
- Never0
- Sometimes5
- Always10
Consistency (25 points)
How often do you hold 1:1s?
- Weekly25
- Every two weeks20
- Monthly10
- No fixed cadence0
In the last month, what share were canceled or moved?
- None0
- About a quarter−5
- About half−12
- More than half−20
Growth (25 points)
When did you last have a career conversation with each report?
- I can't say for several of them0
- Within six months for most8
- Within three months for all15
Is feedback written down when it happens?
- No0
- Sometimes5
- Yes, consistently10
Ownership (20 points)
A manager-set agenda produces answers to the questions you thought to ask. The useful material in a one-on-one is usually the thing the other person was deciding whether to raise.
Who adds items to the agenda?
- Mostly me5
- Mostly them15
- Both, consistently20
Bands and caps
Healthy 75–100. Working 55–74. Drifting 35–54. Broken 0–34.
Three caps set a ceiling regardless of score. No fixed cadence caps at Drifting. More than half canceled caps at Drifting. Nothing formal happening to action items caps at Working.
The caps exist because the dimensions aren't independent. A perfect agenda process on a meeting that happens sporadically isn't a good system, and the arithmetic alone would score it as one.
Carry-forward debt
When action items don't survive the meeting, the loss compounds quietly. The assessment estimates how many follow-ups are being dropped per quarter, from team size, cadence, attendance and what happens to items between meetings.
It assumes about 1.5 action items per conversation, which is a modeled figure, not a measurement. The exact number isn't the point. The point is that "I should be better at follow-up" and "about fifty dropped threads a quarter" describe the same situation, and only one of them sounds like something worth fixing this week.
There's a second cost that doesn't appear in the number. People stop raising things they expect to disappear. By the time follow-through has degraded enough to notice, the agenda has already shrunk to whatever feels safe to mention, and that's much harder to reverse than a filing habit.
What this gets wrong
It can't see the relationship. Two managers with identical scores can have completely different conversations, and the difference is mostly trust, which no structural measure detects.
It can't see whether the meetings are too frequent. The assessment rewards weekly, but weekly one-on-ones with a senior report who doesn't need them is a cost, not a virtue.
It measures your account of the system. The person on the other side might score it differently, and theirs is the more accurate reading.
Weights are judgment. They reflect what I've seen break first, both as a researcher studying how teams work and as someone who has run these meetings badly before running them well.
Common questions
How often should 1:1s happen?
Weekly for most reports, every two weeks for senior people who need less support. The cadence matters less than whether it holds — a meeting every two weeks that always happens beats a weekly one that's first to move when the week gets busy. Monthly is usually too infrequent for anything beyond status.
What should you talk about in a one-on-one?
Whatever the person brings, plus whatever carried over from last time. If you're filling the agenda yourself, you're getting a status update with extra steps. A useful default structure: open items from last time, their topics, then yours.
Who should set the agenda for a 1:1?
Primarily the person reporting to you. A shared document both of you can add to between meetings works better than either of you preparing alone, because it captures things while they're still live rather than whatever is top of mind on the day.
How do you keep track of 1:1 action items?
Somewhere both people can see, reviewed at the start of each meeting. The visibility is what matters — not your memory, but whether the other person can tell that something happened. Thirty seconds of reading open items aloud changes what gets raised, because people stop bringing things they expect to disappear.
How often should you have career conversations with your reports?
At least quarterly, and separately from performance reviews. A career conversation asks where someone is heading; a review assesses where they've been. Combining them turns the first into a negotiation about the second.
How many direct reports is too many?
It depends less on the number than on what you've systematized. Most managers can hold the state of five or six people in their head. Beyond that, anything not written down gets lost, and the first thing to go is the detail that made the last conversation useful.
Where the system lives
Most of what this measures is a filing problem wearing a management costume. Executive OS connects one-on-ones, feedback, priorities and your team into a single system, so the things that carry forward actually do.
View Executive OS on Notion Marketplace ↗