Most Meetings Suck! Let's Change That!
It's time to stop having pointless meetings and start having meaningful ones
How many hours a week do you spend in meetings?
How valuable are such meetings?
How many meetings do you end with a follow-up meeting?
Reflect for a minute on the above questions.
It’s highly likely that you spend more than twenty hours a week on meetings. And there’s a high probability that you dislike many of such meetings. Why’s that?
Unstructured meetings are energy drainers.
When meetings aren’t prepared enough:
Attendants take time to understand what’s the meeting all about
People don’t know why they are attending the meeting
Results are questionable if not just another follow-up
People quickly disengage and start multitasking
I contributed to meetings like the above and learned how to avoid that. The good thing is that a bit of discipline can get you out of the draining energy-meeting trap. Let me help you out.
What’s a meeting agenda?
The meeting agenda defines the session and how it will be conducted. It sets expectations and brings structure, avoiding confusion and optimizing efficiency. Setting a meeting agenda is simple, though lack of it has a tremendous negative impact.
In general, meetings have a lot in common:
Reason for taking place
Participants
Common objective
An agreed approach to reaching the objective
Although the above might be obvious, sometimes it becomes unspoken, and that’s where the problem lies, but a simple meeting agenda can get you out of it.
Types of meeting agenda
Meetings do share common traits but are not all the same. Some sessions are creative, others strategic or operational. Let me share a few different meeting agendas with you.
Ideation 90’: After exploring the problem space of a particular domain, the team gets together to come up with ideas. Here’s the meeting agenda for it:
Context 10’: The product manager shares the learnings from the discovery
Problem understanding: 15’: The product manager shares which problem the team is supposed to solve and opens for questions
Silent ideation 10’: Each team member reflects on ideas to solve the discussed problem.
Present ideas 30’: Each member presents their ideas to everyone.
Cluster 10’: The team clusters similar ideas to facilitate prioritization.
Prioritize 5’: Each team member votes on three ideas they like most.
Next steps 10’: The team agrees on the next steps to test the prioritized ideas.
Board meeting 120’: Every week, the board gets together to align on the most critical operational issues to address and act accordingly.
Review actions 15’: The board reviews the previously agreed actions and defines if further action is needed.
Prioritize topics 10’: Given the topics on the agenda, the board prioritizes what’s most important and allocates the time they want to invest in each topic.
Discussion 80’: Based on the prioritization, the board discusses each topic respecting the timebox assigned.
Define actions 15’: Based on the discussions, the board creates action to ensure issues are solved and the company progresses in the right direction.
Note that both meetings are pretty different. The ideation session structures what happens when the board meeting topics are prioritized during the session. It’s important to understand the goal of the meeting and then define the best-fitting agenda for it.
How to write meeting agendas
Preparing for meetings can be pretty simple when a format is followed throughout the company. If that’s missing, it’s your chance to bring some structure into place.
Over the years, I learned that bad meetings share common characteristics. They lack an objective, and participants are unaware of how the meeting will unfold. Good meetings are simple to understand and don’t surprise participants negatively.
To write good meeting agendas, do the following:
Goal: Define the goal of the meeting. What would be the desired outcome by the end of the meeting?
Context: Help participants understand why the meeting is taking place. Where are you coming from?
Topics: Define the structure to reach the desired goal. How are you going to achieve the set outcome?
By doing the above, participants will be aware of what to expect. Ideally, you share the meeting agenda at least a day before so participants have time to reflect. In recurrent meetings, the topics are often set dynamically. In this case, it’s fine to have a rule of adding topics by the end of the day before the meeting takes place so all participants can look at the agenda beforehand.
It’s key to keep the goal achievable and write the topics in a few keywords. Overwriting will ensure people don’t read, so ensure you provide enough information, not more than that.
Meeting agenda template
If all meetings are similar, what if you could boost productivity using a standard template?
Google Meets allows you to create meeting notes when setting up a recurring meeting. Confluence has meeting templates, which you could benefit from. It’s easy to structure meetings.
Let me bring you my template. I focus on preparing for the meeting and keeping the history clear for everyone.
The above template focuses on the critical aspects of most meetings. By feeling it out, you can reach a minimum level of clarity that reduces the chances of having draining energy sessions. Here’s an example of a good meeting agenda.
Before the meeting, you won’t have notes for each topic or action, but you can add key notes for each topic during the meeting. Also, by the end of meetings, I recommend defining clear actions: who does what by when, and who is a person. Here’s what it looks like after the meeting.
Formats for meeting agendas
Nowadays, you can have multiple meeting agenda formats. You can have a more traditional approach where you document everything separately and then share it with participants for approval. Or you can also have it digitally available for everyone whenever they want.
I’ve seen it working well with simplicity and focus on structure and conciseness. I like using Google Docs or Confluence because of their search function. Whenever I want to find something, I can quickly search and refresh my memory.
Tips for effective meeting agendas
Energy-draining meetings are mainly avoidable. Here are a few tips to make your meeting agendas engaging and valuable:
Achievable goal: Set an attainable goal within the time you allocate to the meeting. It’s better to set a humble goal and over-achieve it than to set an audacious goal and miss it.
Limit attendance: The more people you get in the room, the less interactive the meeting becomes. Only invite people who are key to reaching the meeting goal. Otherwise, respect the person’s time by not inviting her.
Reduce topics: Don’t pack the session. Trying to squeeze all your topics into one meeting will create pressure and lead to poor results. Prioritize what matters most and focus on that.
Conclusion and key takeaways
Bad meetings are avoidable.
Good meetings are plannable.
When you take the time to do your homework, you save a lot of time for everyone. Simple meeting agendas can give you back energy and precious time.
Here are the takeaways from this episode:
Ensure every meeting has a goal. If you cannot define a goal for the meeting, refrain from having it.
Share the meeting agenda with participants before the session.
Keep a minimum meeting agenda structure to help participants understand why they are there, what you’re set to achieve, and how the meeting will unfold.
Less is more. Humble goals and a short agenda are your allies, not enemies.
Let's rock the product world together!
Here are a few ways I can help you even more:
Upgrade your subscription to Premium and get one deeply thought newsletter per month (20+ minutes reading) plus access to 300+ episodes
Join my cohort, Product Discovery Done Right
Have a lovely day,
David
Super helpful format. I pretty regularly email those who are inviting me to ask for an agenda and use it to decide if I invest the time or not. If they can't provide one and I'm not sure what the meeting will be about there's a chance I just don't show up.