The best place to start when creating the agenda for a meeting is to return to some foundational items...
- Why is the meeting being held?
- What is the purpose of the meeting?
- What outcomes are you trying to achieve?
- What things need to be discussed or presented?
- Are there alternatives to achieve results without a meeting?
After pondering these questions, you should be able to quickly come to a conclusion as to whether the meeting should be held. If so, then you can begin drafting what the agenda topics should be.
Start by thinking about and listing all the things you need to cover in the meeting. Sometimes these will be presentations, other times discussions and sometimes decisions. These items will make up the core of your meeting agenda and will drive how the meeting will be laid out. Assign a duration for each of these items and think about whether or not you'll be able to stay within the time limit or if the topic will likely go over. If your odds of going over are high, you might want to consider allocating more time to the topic, or being prepared to diligently manage the meeting to the time slot.
Next, you'll want to think about what peripheral or accessory agenda items will support the type of meeting being held...
- Staff Meeting
- Project Meeting
- One-on-One
- Customer Meeting
- Sales Meeting
- Training Meeting
- Board Meeting
- Review/Approval Meeting
- Working Session
- Brainstorming Session
Depending upon how much extra time you have in the meeting after covering the core topics, as well as the type of meeting, you might include various items as either one off or regular meeting items. For example, for a staff or project meeting with a regular set of attendees, it might be helpful to start off each meeting with a short ice breaker to ground everyone in the meeting and help build the team. But ice breakers won't work as well in a one-on-one where you might instead spend this time talking about your lives and topics outside of work.
And remember not to overlook the tail end of the meeting. You should plan your meetings similar to a story, with a specific beginning, middle and end. Sometimes the latter parts of a meeting are the most important, especially after attendees have settled in, have gotten comfortable with each other and the participation has ramped up. So think about agenda items such as an opens roundtable where attendees can bring up relevant work topics, such as a recently discovered process problem. Or maybe you want to allocate time for a question and answer period after a presentation. And for longer or more formal meetings, it might be helpful to spend time in a recap and setting of expectations for what happens after the meeting.
Once you're done drafting your agenda, there remains one final important check to be performed. Does your agenda support the intended purpose of the meeting? If not, then you should probably reconsider changing the meeting's purpose or the agenda items themselves so that they can align.
Finally, invite your attendees to the meeting via your preferred calendar app and make sure to include the following sections within the invite.
Remember that it should not be a given for your attendees to join your meeting. Instead it's on you to make a justification for their time and presence through a clear and compelling case within your purpose and agenda items.