Always have an agenda
And by always, I mean always. Every. Single. Time.
The agenda-less meeting is one of the absolute best ways to waste time. Second perhaps to Facebook (although Pokemon Go is now a strong contender). Get a bunch of people into a room with no prior knowledge of what they’ll be talking about and you have the perfect recipe for tangents, boredom and arguments. Or just another scene from The Office.
Now I’m no saint and am guilty of sending a few agenda-less meeting invites in the past myself. It’s so easy. “I need to talk to Sophie about the best way to implement this plugin, I’ll just get 15 mins of her time. I don’t need to worry about an agenda since it’s a quick meeting and I’m only asking her one thing.”
Sophie on the other hand receives 10 requests like this a day. With no agenda she has no time to prepare, and what she could potentially answer in 5 mins takes far longer.
In my eyes an agenda is just a list of items to be discussed. It gives all attendees insight into what you’d like to chat about and what they should be prepared to discuss. It doesn’t need to be complex or extremely specific.
As an example here’s the agenda we’ve been using recently in our customer interviews with Learning and Development managers.
- Introduction and overview - 5 mins
- Problem validation - 5 mins
- Open discussion - 15 mins
- Wrap up - 5 mins
In the first 5 minutes we introduce ourselves and give an overview of the meeting and project. It allows us to give context to the questions we’ll be asking.
In the next 5 minutes we run through some of the learning pain points that we’ve identified and ask for feedback.
Then for the bulk of the meeting we have an open discussion. This might seem a little strange, since it’s not a specific item in itself. But it allows us to have a free discussion that is timeboxed.
In the last 5 minutes we summarise what we spoke about, talk about next steps and note any action items along with who’s responsible for completing them.
If I’ve been invited to a meeting with no agenda, then I’ll ask the organiser what the purpose of the meeting is and what we’ll be talking about.
Be clear on who is attending the meeting
Everyone has their own personal agenda. And it helps to prepare for this prior to the meeting by knowing who’s attending. And what their role/interest is.
It’s the organiser’s responsibility to include this info. Either in the meeting invite or in a separate location with a link in the invite. If I’m an attendee and this info hasn’t been included I’ll ask the organiser for it.
In my previous post I outlined a challenging ambush meeting that I experienced. If I’d asked who was attending the meeting beforehand, I could have potentially avoided the ensuing debacle.
Don’t be afraid to pull the pin
If I’m in a meeting as an attendee and I don’t feel I’m able to contribute anything of value, I’ll ask “Is there anything else you need from me?”.
If I’ve been brought in as a solutions expert and have been totally ambushed, then I’m comfortable in being honest about that and closing the meeting. In fact, Mark and I did this just the other day.
One of the customer interviews that we ran was with a gentleman with the title of L+D Manager. We soon discovered however that this was somewhat of a misnomer. And that he in fact did very little L+D. Conscious of not wasting either his time or ours we politely ended the meeting.
I used to be anxious about being speaking up in a meeting if I felt I had nothing to add. But after sitting through so many that I wasn't able to contribute to, I’ve learnt to be assertive. And in my experience honesty is appreciated.
