Meeting agenda’s are deceptively hard. For a one hour meeting it’s not too bad because the damage is only a lost hour. For a full day meeting it gets rough because you start wasting serious time. Multiple days and your agenda can not only waste time but set wrong expectations and accomplish counterproductive results.
The real issue for bad agenda writing is harnessing people’s desire to be productive. People sitting in on long meetings want to walk away with something out of it. If your agenda does not push them toward a good outcome they will leave with a bad outcome (while not realizing it is a bad outcome).
Bad agenda’s stem from a few common factors:
- Management’s desire to put their own names on speaking/leadership roles and use it as a political position to push their particular agenda.
- Feel good actions that will not actually accomplish anything. This often looks like brainstorming BIG topics that are real problems but can’t be fixed by the people in the room.
- Discussion with no goal. Another human characteristic is that we love to debate positions where we disagree with others. The debate can go on for awhile if not stopped or redirected towards a purpose.
- Meeting for the purpose of meeting. And finally, the big one. We all know we need to get together and talk but we have no idea why. So we schedule the meeting and hope for the best.
There are others, but these are by far the most common.
It is your responsibility to keep things productive, to that end here are some rules to follow when it’s time for you to set an agenda:
- Start at the end. What is the desired out come of the meeting? If it is a set of actions, know what they should look like. If it is bonding and team building, make sure you include those activities. If it is conveying information, decide if you actually need a meeting or if there is a better way to share.
- Get the right team in the room. There may be 30 people involved but who are the key players that are part of getting to the desired outcome? It’s easy to invite 30 people, it’s hard to choose the right 6.
- Think about your agenda and circulate it ahead of time. If you have the right team, they will tell you what needs to be added, dropped or changed. Remember, they want to be productive.
- Keep discussion on point. Don’t be afraid to cut off stray debates or off topic discussions. The goal is not to solve every problem, just to get them far enough down the road that they can be put on the post-meeting follow-up list.
- Plan for post meeting actions. If your meeting was intended to drive actions you must have an action tracking process for once you are out. If your meeting was intended to team build you must encourage people to continue getting together and using the concepts they were given.
Good meetings are very difficult. Give them the time and thought they deserve. Everyone will come out of it for the better.