Agendas are an important first step for a successful meeting, but far too few leaders put enough thought into the ones they create. In fact, research has found that a large percentage of agendas are simply recycled meeting to meeting. So what can you do to create agendas that inspire, target the issues that need to be resolved, and leave attendees satisfied with the time spent in discussion together? Instead of listing agenda items as simple bullet points, reframe them as questions instead. This approach will make you more strategic, thinking critically about the meaning of a topic and what your ultimate outcome is. It will also make it easier to determine your invitation list (the people essential to answering the questions) and better informs when to actually end a meeting (when the questions have been answered to satisfaction). And if you can’t think of questions to ask, maybe you don’t need that meeting in the first place.
Read any book on running effective meetings and, chances are, one of the first recommendations is going to be to set an agenda. Managers are often led to believe that having a written plan is the key for an engaging and successful meeting. Sadly, it’s not that easy. Research has actually found little to no relationship between the presence of an agenda and attendees’ evaluation of meeting quality. What matters is not the agenda itself but the relevance and importance of what’s on it, and how the leader facilitates discussion of the agenda items.
