You've invited folks to a meeting and one of them has declined. What do you do now? I've already covered whether you should attend a meeting as an attendee, but what do you do if you're the organizer?
The first thing to do is find out why you received the decline. Ideally the person declining would have provided you this info, but sometimes you'll need to probe a bit if they didn't. Are they too busy? Do the topics not pertain to them? Was the purpose and agenda not convincing? Or maybe they're double booked or have a personal conflict.
Depending upon the situation, how important is it for them to attend? For example if it's a decision maker that you absolutely need in the meeting, maybe you can shift the meeting date or time slot? Or if the decision and lead in will only take say 15 minutes, you can have the decision maker only attend for that time period.
Remember that the back and forth between invitation and acceptance/decline is the start of communication. You may still need to have an actual conversation whether in instant message, phone call or even face-to-face to find out more. You'll get more positive results if you're inquisitive, supportive and sometimes even accommodating.
In general, and within an effective meetings environment, no one is required to attend your meeting. Instead it's a proposition to invest, whether time, effort or brain cycles, to achieve one or more goals for your team, organization or your company. Most folks are often happy to help, but occasionally there's some roadblocks along the way that you'll need to address. Time and scheduling are likely the easiest to mitigate. If someone has a conflict that can't be solved, you may need to sync with the person before the meeting to get their input, decision or simply to provide them more details on what will be discussed. And if your meeting minutes are not enough, you can always schedule a follow up sync, post meeting to bring them up to speed.
If your purpose an agenda itself isn't compelling enough, then this is a great conversation to have with the person who declined. Treat this as a learning experience where you can find out more about what's missing. What could be adjusted to make them more compelling. Is there something outlined that could be done differently?
And of course, don't discount someone who declines and doesn't have an intersect with the topics at hand. Maybe a light bulb goes off and you'll realize that yes, this person isn't really needed in the meeting and they've just done everyone a favor by declining. Regardless of the outcome, remember that your goal shouldn't be to get everyone into your meeting, but instead get the most effective and right people.