Meeting agenda is mandatory

You can hear a lot about meetings in the organisations, you can find very interesting posts, books about that, but I will leave here just one improvement, one thing which I like a lot. It is about having the ability to say “no” to the meeting invitation without an agenda.

Why?

First of all, you can see if this meeting could be an email.

The second reason is that you can prepare yourself before the meeting to not waste time. From my experience, agenda should be mandatory. It doesn’t have to be a formal agenda, it could be just a couple of bullet points, or short description, that’s it.

Something like this:

• Describe the meeting’s context and why it’s happening
• Highlight who is talking what
• Set time limits on each topic
• Explain if any material needs to be reviewed, or any input is needed before the meeting

To have an effective meeting please try to come up with something BEFORE you show up to the meeting.

It’s important to create a culture, where people are not afraid to say “no” to meetings, there are many other challenges to do, let’s try to balance it.

Best,

Łukasz.