A great article by Michael Lopp from back in 2009 on going from being an engineer in a company to being a manager:

As best I can tell, there are two useful types of meeting: alignment and creation. Briefly:

 Alignment meetings sound like this: “It’s red, are we all in agreement it’s red? Ok, swell. Wait, Phil thinks it’s blue. Phil, here are the 18 compelling reasons it’s red. Convinced? Done now?”

 Creation meetings sound like this: “We need more blue. How are we going to do that? Phil, you’re our blue man. What should we do here?”

 There are other meetings out there, but you will learn to avoid them. One being the therapy meeting. They sound like this: “Show of hands, who likes to talk about blue? Or red? I don’t care. Let’s explore our color feelings for the next 60 minutes.”

The article is written from the perspective of a tech company, but many principles could easily be applied to other businesses or companies.

Reading it gave me newfound respect for managers at my previous employers.