The Power of the Agenda
Agendas are such a powerful and useful tool but are often overlooked, particularly with the advent of online meetings and quick catch ups. Catching up at a recent networking event, one contact arrived late and voiced their frustration at been held up by a 2-hour meeting where very little had been achieved. In fact, the most useful discussion and decisions happened in the ½ hour after the meeting.
It’s an all too familiar story and one I’ve heard several times over the years. There’s nothing worse than attending a meeting not knowing why you’re there and what is trying to be achieved.
At Board level, meetings are traditionally very structured with agendas managed by the Company Secretary in line with business requirements and are taken as the norm. However, interestingly, how to run a meeting and put an agenda together is not a skill set generally taught to young people before entering the work environment. There’s no real need at the educational level where the focus is on obtaining qualifications, but once in the working environment these ‘soft skills’ suddenly become a necessity to progress and you’re expected to just ‘know’.
This was highlighted when I previously ran training sessions for young people on ‘how to run a meeting’ to complement their sales training and / or help them on their journey to promotion. At the start of these sessions virtually everyone claimed they had never run a meeting before, but further discussion revealed they had all run meetings at University or through their hobbies without realising. From sports clubs to debating, counselling and playing the stock market, the list was endless but they had dismissed their experiences as not relevant for the workplace. Even with their prior experience, attendees saw running work meetings with clients and colleagues as a new and potentially stressful experience.
When planning a meeting an agenda is the key. This simple 1-page document helps formulate the meeting requirements and objectives in advance and answers the key questions of ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’. Everyone is busy and time is at a premium so imagine being able to walk into a meeting knowing exactly what is being covered with the preparation completed as far as possible so you can focus on the key outcomes (the ‘how’) with confidence and run the meeting to time.
In my role as a Project Manager and Consultant, an agenda is one of my key tools, as anyone who has worked with me knows well. Issuing agendas in advance of meetings means I can confirm the topics to be covered and it gives attendees the opportunity to review and comment in advance. The agenda also acts as a trigger to confirm attendance, prep, add additional items and / or adjust meeting timings, or even take a different approach to the decision-making process. Most importantly it enables those conversations that need to happen for the required outcomes. The agenda is also a useful reminder in busy diaries that the meeting is approaching, particularly in a hybrid world where people can attend in person and online.
Whether you have a formal agenda as a separate document, or simply include the agenda to an email, the important part is to consider what needs to be included in the meeting and allow sufficient time for attendees to prepare or advise an alternative approach. Setting the agenda is just the first stage in how to actually run the meeting, but it’s the critical first stage in the process.
Helen runs operational and change management projects to support growing and / or changing businesses, tailored to requirements. For more information please contact [email protected].