Ceremony - Do you know how to get a busy person into the meeting?

It can be difficult to get everybody into a meeting, especially these days when many meetings are online. It is important that time is not wasted in these situations, so it's good to be proactive and have a plan for when the decision maker is busy.

Make it a ceremony

You have already shared the agenda, so pick out the best item and ping the decision maker on teams before the meeting:

"We're meeting in 30 minutes, I'm excited to be talking about xxx"

Be persistent

If the meeting has started and someone is missing, then add them to the call. Ping them if they dont answer. If a decision maker is missing from the call and you don't get a response, tell them "I will call you towards the end of the meeting for a summary", as per Do you know how to loop someone in at the end of a meeting?

Once you have done the above, you can start the meeting without the decision-maker. You may choose to start with the less important items in the agenda, or the ones that won't require a final decision ("For information" items) that can be easily summarised at the end of the meeting.