Team

Lean coffee board

Run the meeting without an agenda: everyone posts topics, the room votes, and the top topic gets a timebox. When the clock runs out the group votes to keep going or move on. Rooms are ephemeral: no accounts, and everything is wiped after two hours of inactivity.

Start

Create a board and send the link to your team. Whoever opens it joins the same room and can post topics right away.

How lean coffee works

Lean coffee is a meeting with a democratic agenda: people show up, write the topics they care about on cards, and the room dot-votes on which ones are worth the time. Each winning topic gets a timebox instead of an open-ended slot, so no single subject quietly eats the hour. When the timebox ends the group takes a roman vote, thumbs up to keep going and thumbs down to move on, and the majority decides whether the topic earns two more minutes or the next card comes up.

The format was created by Jim Benson and Jeremy Lightsmith in Seattle in 2009. Their insight was that the agenda is the expensive part of a meeting, and that a group can build one in five minutes if you let it vote rather than argue.

Everything on this board is live and shared. Cards are visible as soon as they are posted, so people can build on each other rather than duplicate topics, and each person holds three dots. A dot comes back when its topic has been discussed, which means people who join late or run out early still get a say in the next round.

Frequently asked questions

Who starts the timer and who can skip?

Anyone in the room. Lean coffee works best without a chair, and small groups rarely need one. If that bothers your team, agree out loud who drives the board before you start.

What happens on a tie in the roman vote?

A tie moves on. The default of the format is to stop, because a topic that only half the room wants to continue has usually given you what it is going to give you.

Can people vote after the discussion has started?

Yes. Someone who joins mid-round gets three dots and can spend them on anything still queued, so the running order updates as the room fills.

Is the countdown accurate if I switch tabs?

Yes. The server holds the end time and every client counts down to the same instant, so a backgrounded tab catches up the moment you return. The chime only sounds while the tab is open.

Is anything saved?

No. The board lives on the server only while people use it and is deleted two hours after the last activity. Copy the wrap-up markdown if you want a record.