Tips for Preparing Your Meeting Agenda

Have a big meeting ahead of you with some key stakeholders involved? Want to be sure to keep the meeting on track and get decisions made? Follow these simple steps to create a meeting agenda to keep individuals focused and your meeting on track:

1. Determine the goals of the meeting: Work in conjunction with meeting attendees to determine the purpose of the meeting (status meeting, problem solving, etc.)
2. Identify agenda items (related to the goals) for the meeting: Work in conjunction with meeting attendees to determine agenda items, person responsible for leading that particular agenda item discussion and timing for the discussion.

   For example:

   Agenda Item	Lead	Timing
   I. Review proposed process for managing vendor events	John Smith	30 min.
   II. Determine schedule of vendor events for upcoming year	Alice Johnson	60 min.

3. Organize the agenda with high priority items or those that require more discussion to reach consensus at the top and lower priority items or those that will not require much discussion at the bottom. Consider including a “round robin” discussion after all other agenda items with 5 – 10 minutes allocated per person.
4. Send the agenda to all attendees along with expectations (e.g., please be prepared to discuss your status of the project within the 10 minutes allocated)
5. Be there early for the meeting and have the main topics (with timings) written on a flip chart. Have a separate flip chart sheet set aside labeled “Parking Lot” and another labeled “future meeting.”
6. Start the meeting on time.
7. Assign one individual to be the timekeeper and one individual to keep track of notes.
1. If anything comes up that is “off topic” – put in on the “parking lot” flip chart.
2. If a topic goes on more than planned for, put in on the “future meeting” flip chart.
8. At the very end of the meeting, evaluate the effectiveness of the meeting and meeting agenda. Determine dates/times to meet to follow up on the “future meeting” flip chart topics and whether or not “parking lot” items need to be scheduled for another meeting or can be discussed in one-on-one conferences.

You’ll find that when you are more organized and stay on point in the meeting (and set expectations that the meeting will stay on time and focused), that participants are more likely to show up on time and participate in the meeting. Which only helps you get what you need!

Try it out on your next meeting and let me know how it goes!