Lessmeeting

7 Steps to The Perfect Meeting Agenda

perfect-meeting-agenda

• 1) Create your meeting agenda 3 days in advance

• Follow a process, whether it’s sent through email or printed and distributed, make sure everyone on your team knows what to expect. Sending it in advanced ensures that attendees have ample time to prepare or read through any notes they will need before the meeting and raises flags if the objective doesn’t match their expectations.

• 2) Start with the simple details

• What time it should start? (end time is determined after agenda topics are set)

• Who should be attending? (more on this in day 2)

• The place or dial-in information for accessing the meeting

• 3) The Meeting Objective

• Before you start writing an agenda what is the goal of this meeting?

• If asked why you are meeting, the objective should answer this in no more than 2 sentences.

• Once that goal is established, prioritize the list of topics from most important to least (to ensure the most important pieces get accomplished).

• 4) Time Per Topic

• Let the content dictate how long each topic should take. Don’t fall into the trap of over scheduling time per topic.

• People tend to schedule time based on the automatic 30 minute time block in their default calendar even if it could be done in 15 minutes or requires 45. Let the content dictate time, not the software.

• 5) Keep the agenda to less than 5 topics

• No one wants to spend 2 hours in a meeting. Long agendas seem daunting and often don’t get read.

• 6) Include any other pertinent information for the meeting.

• Ex: @Stephen will be taking meeting minutes.

• Ex2: Please read attached document on weekly sales numbers prior to meeting.

• 7) What if someone sends an invite with no agenda?

• Come up with a company policy to deal with agenda-less meetings.

• A common solution is to decline any invites that don’t include the necessary information to have a productive meeting.