An Agenda is a Plan for Success

Planning a meeting without an agenda is a recipe for confusion, distraction, and, worse, a long story about Sandra’s cat’s latest alignment.

Managing attendee expectations begins the moment you set an agenda. The more prepared attendees feel, the more likely they will engage during the meeting and contribute effectively.

An agenda articulates to attendees that you will run the meeting orderly and that productivity is the objective.

The 5 Definitive Benefits of a Clear Agenda

#1: Focus Attendee

Without an agenda, it’s easy for meetings to become sidetracked, and the essential items get left by the wayside. A clear plan keeps everyone on track and ensures that each agenda item gets the attention it deserves.

#2: Stay on Schedule

With a clearly defined agenda, you know exactly how long the meeting will last and what topics will be covered. In addition, a well-thought-out schedule allows you to plan your speaking notes and ensure that one subject does not monopolize your entire meeting.

#3: Sets Expectations

It’s essential to communicate the purpose of the meeting to your participants so they know ahead of time what to expect. Nobody likes walking into a meeting thinking, “Did I need to prepare something for this meeting?”.

#4: Prepare Participants

An agenda in your invitation allows the participants to prepare. The more prepared participants feel, the more likely they will engage during the meeting. In addition, asking for Feedback ahead of time ensures essential topics are covered and creates buy-in on the agenda, so participants know that you’ll cover what is important to them.

#5: Increase Productivity

Get down to business quicker with an agenda. Then, your participants will jump into the necessary conversation and spend less time talking about last night’s RuPaul’s Drage Race season 50 (unless that topic’s on the agenda).

How to Write a Compelling Meeting Agenda

Before you even start to plan your meeting, there are several points you’ll need to consider to ensure you’ve got all your bases covered.

What outcomes do you want to achieve from the meeting?

Define your goals and ensure they are realistic and appropriate for the attendees; this is your opportunity for everyone to hear what you expect of them. Then, they can either commit or push back on your expectations.

What’s essential to the team?

While planning your meeting, it’s worth having a conversation with the other members of the team who will be joining you. Gather their ideas and input to get a sense of what matters most to them, and ask their opinion about what outcome you are hoping to achieve from the meeting.

What questions will you ask?

Consider issues that need to be addressed in the meeting and include this agenda. Also, don’t forget to assume any questions the attendees may have, as there may be information they need missing from the agenda.

What’s the desired outcome of each task?

Consider which tasks will need to be completed during the meeting and assign a priority level to each to ensure they get done correctly.

A Mental Model to Build a Balanced Agenda

An agenda can help provide context and set expectations, but it also has another helpful trait. It can help you balance the discussion by ensuring you have enough time for the number of topics you plan to discuss.

This simple equation could help give you a rough idea of how much time each attendee could speak for if the meeting were evenly divided.

Open Discussion: Aim for 5–10 minutes of speaking time per attendee.

Target Presentations: Aim for 1–3 minutes of question time per attendee.

• You will also need time for intros, a warm-up activity, and setting context.

• This equation helps you determine if the agenda is too ambitious. You can always:

• split the meeting into multiple parts, or

• reduce the agenda items.

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A Few Legendary Agenda Tips

Start and End Times

Instead of ending a meeting at 2:30, finish up at 2:25; this gives participants a bit of buffer before their next call.

Subject Area

Break down each agenda item by subject area to make it easier for your attendees to follow the discussion.

Make it visual

Use emojis to make the agenda more visually appealing and make it easier for people to interpret the context.

Include a Warm-up

Warm-up activities for meetings bring energy into a room and help Leaders identify their team’s goals, motivations, and strengths before jumping into the meeting.

Buy our Bundle of Warm-Up Team Building Activities to kick off your next meeting.

Don’t Rush

Add time for setting the context and getting everyone on the same page. It is better to start with everyone aligned and take more time than jumping in and having people stop or drop off because they are confused.

Plan Breaks

Plan for a break every 60–90 minutes as people are people and need to do people things. So schedule a bio break so everyone has a few minutes to reset.

Our Recommended Agenda Tools

Meeting management software help plans and guide team meetings to ensure meetings are easy to plan and focused. Users leverage these solutions to coordinate meetings efficiently and reduce the time necessary to create new agendas for every meeting. In addition, organizations benefit from consistent meeting formats across their departments and teams.

Check out our top picks for meeting agenda tools: Adam.ai, Avoma, Docket, Fellow.app, Hugo, and hypercontext.