Too many high-level meetings fall prey to "bike-shedding" -- the notion that smart, powerful people will quickly sign off on important issues they barely understand but will spend hours arguing over trivial issues they think they understand, such as whether to build a bike shed. Avoid this trap by giving your team the information they need to make big decisions and shielding them from the small ones, advises Dan McCarthy. "If you’re the leader, exercise your decision making authority on the trivial stuff," he writes.