How-to-design-an-agenda-for-an-effective-meeting
We’ve all been in meetings where participants
are unprepared, people veer off-track, and the topics discussed are a waste of
the team’s time. These problems — and others like it — stem from poor agenda
design. An effective agenda sets clear expectations for what needs to occur
before and during a meeting. It helps team members prepare, allocates time
wisely, quickly gets everyone on the same topic, and identifies when the
discussion is complete. If problems still occur during the meeting, a
well-designed agenda increases the team’s ability to effectively and quickly
address them.
Here are some tips for designing an effective
agenda for your next meeting, with a sample agenda and template below. You can
use these tips whether a meeting lasts an hour or three days and whether you’re
meeting with a group of five or forty:
Seek input from team
members. If you want your team to be engaged in meetings, make sure
the agenda includes items that reflect their needs. Ask team members to suggest
agenda items along with a reason why each item needs to be addressed in a team
setting. If you ultimately decide not to include an item, be accountable —
explain your reasoning to the team member who suggested it.
Select topics that affect
the entire team.
Team meeting time is expensive and difficult
to schedule. It should mainly be used to discuss and make decisions on issues
that affect the whole team — and need the whole team to solve them. These are
often ones in which individuals must coordinate their actions because their
parts of the organization are interdependent. They are also likely to be issues
for which people have different information and needs. Examples might include:
How do we best allocate shared resources? How do we reduce response time? If
the team isn’t spending most of the meeting talking about interdependent
issues, members will disengage and ultimately not attend.
List agenda topics as
questions the team needs to answer.
Most agenda topics are simply several words
strung together to form a phrase, for example: “office space reallocation.”
This leaves meeting participants wondering, “What about office space
reallocation?” When you list a topic as a question (or questions) to be
answered, it instead reads like this: “Under what conditions, if any, should we
reallocate office space?”
A question enables team members to better
prepare for the discussion and to monitor whether their own and others’
comments are on track. During the meeting, anyone who thinks a comment is
off-track can say something like, “I’m not seeing how your comment relates to
the question we’re trying to answer. Can you help me understand the
connection?” Finally, the team knows that when the question has been answered,
the discussion is complete.
Note whether the purpose
of the topic is to share information, seek input for a decision, or make a
decision.
It’s difficult for team members to participate
effectively if they don’t know whether to simply listen, give their input, or be
part of the decision making process. If people think they are involved in
making a decision, but you simply want their input, everyone is likely to feel
frustrated by the end of the conversation. Updates are better distributed — and
read — prior to the meeting, using a brief part of the meeting to answer
participants’ questions. If the purpose is to make a decision, state the
decision-making rule. If you are the formal leader, at the beginning of the
agenda item you might say, “If possible, I want us to make this decision by
consensus. That means that everyone can support and implement the decision
given their roles on the team. If we’re not able to reach consensus after an
hour of discussion, I’ll reserve the right to make the decision based on the
conversation we’ve had. I’ll tell you my decision and my reasoning for making
it.”
Estimate a realistic
amount of time for each topic. This serves two
purposes. First, it requires you to do the math — to calculate how much time
the team will need for introducing the topic, answering questions, resolving
different points of view, generating potential solutions, and agreeing on the
action items that follow from discussion and decisions. Leaders typically
underestimate the amount of time needed. If there are ten people in your
meeting and you have allocated ten minutes to decide under what conditions, if
any, you will reallocate office space, you have probably underestimated the
time. By doing some simple math, you would realize that the team would have to
reach a decision immediately after each of the ten members has spoken for a
minute.
Second, the estimated time enables team
members to either adapt their comments to fit within the allotted timeframe or
to suggest that more time may be needed. The purpose of listing the time is not
to stop discussion when the time has elapsed; that simply contributes to poor
decision making and frustration. The purpose is to get better at allocating
enough time for the team to effectively and efficiently answer the questions
before it.
Propose a process for
addressing each agenda item.
The process identifies the steps through which
the team will move together to complete the discussion or make a decision.
Agreeing on a process significantly increases meeting effectiveness, yet leaders
rarely do it. Unless the team has agreed on a process, members will, in good
faith, participate based on their own process. You’ve probably seen this in
action: some team members are trying to define the problem, other team members
are wondering why the topic is on the agenda, and still other members are
already identifying and evaluating solutions.
The process for addressing an item should
appear on the written agenda. When you reach that item during the meeting,
explain the process and seek agreement: “I suggest we use the following
process. First, let’s take about 10 minutes to get all the relevant information
on the table. Second, let’s take another 10 minutes to identify and agree on
any assumptions we need to make. Third, we’ll take another 10 minutes to
identify and agree on the interests that should be met for any solution.
Finally, we’ll use about 15 minutes to craft a solution that ideally takes into
account all the interests, and is consistent with our relevant information and
assumptions.
Specify how members
should prepare for the meeting.
Distribute the agenda with sufficient time
before the meeting, so the team can read background materials and prepare their
initial thoughts for each agenda item ahead of time.
Identify who is
responsible for leading each topic.
Someone other than the formal meeting leader
is often responsible for leading the discussion of a particular agenda item.
This person may be providing context for the topic, explaining data, or may
have organizational responsibility for that area. Identifying this person next
to the agenda item ensures that anyone who is responsible for leading part of
the agenda knows it — and prepares for it — before the meeting.
Make the first topic
“review and modify agenda as needed.”
Even if you and your team have jointly
developed the agenda before the meeting, take a minute to see if anything needs
to be changed due to late breaking events. I once had a meeting scheduled with
a senior leadership team. As we reviewed the agenda, I asked if we needed to
modify anything. The CEO stated that he had just told the board of directors
that he planned to resign and that we probably needed to significantly change
the agenda. Not all agenda modifications are this dramatic, but by checking at
the beginning of the meeting, you increase the chance that the team will use
its meeting time most effectively.
End the meeting with a
plus/delta.
If your team meets regularly, two questions
form a simple continuous improvement process: What did we do well? What do we want
to do differently for the next meeting? Investing five or ten minutes will
enable the team to improve performance, working relationships, and team member
satisfaction. Here are some questions to consider when identifying what the
team has done well and what it wants to do differently:
1. Was the
agenda distributed in time for everyone to prepare?
2. How
well did team members prepare for the meeting?
3. How
well did we estimate the time needed for each agenda item?
4. How
well did we allocate our time for decision making and discussion?
5. How
well did everyone stay on-topic? How well did team members speak up when they
thought someone was off-topic?
6. How
effective was the process for each agenda item?
To ensure that your team follows through,
review the results of the plus/delta at the beginning of the next meeting.
If you develop agendas using these tips,your
team will have an easier time getting — and staying — focused in
meetings.
Roger
Schwarz
https://hbr.org/2015/03/how-to-design-an-agenda-for-an-effective-meeting
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