A meeting agenda is a list of topics, discussions, or questions that will guide your meeting to ensure that you’re making the most of your time together. Think of it as your meeting’s roadmap. Preparing a meeting agenda can sometimes feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.
Here are the tried-and-true sections of every meeting agenda you’ll want to include to make sure your meeting agenda is detailed, but still leaves plenty of room for discussions and important conversations that may come up. Once you’ve handled these, the rest of your agenda creation will flow naturally.
1. Start with your meeting details
This is typically at the top of your meeting agenda and should include the goal of your meeting—it doesn’t have to be a big or lofty goal. Just write out the purpose of your meeting and what you aim to achieve. Are you looking for a decision to be made? Do you need to present your research? Is it a project update? Starting with the goal helps your meeting attendees quickly understand the purpose of your meeting.
This section also includes the date, time, attendees, and location of the meeting. It might feel like this section can be skipped, but including it can be helpful later. For example, if you’re having an internal meeting over Zoom, your calendar invitations will hold the information about the date, time, location, and attendees. However, it can be helpful to have some of the information listed so you can quickly reference those details in the future without having to compare your meeting agenda to your calendar. Ultimately, it’s up to you!
2. Now add your agenda topics
This should be the order of topics for discussion or presentation. Outline each section and put the most important points at the top so they aren’t skipped if the group runs out of time. You should leave plenty of time for your meeting attendees to listen, discuss, and make a decision about your agenda items.
It’s okay to save topics for later
If the agenda is full and there’s a good chance topics will be missed, save them for a future occurrence. That’s better than barrelling through topics that deserve more discussion from the group.
Balancing presentations
If you schedule a meeting for an hour and you’re the only person presenting, it’s likely your attendees will tune out. Mix up the meeting agenda by giving other attendees the chance to speak, lead, or present specific topics and agenda items. This is especially important if there are more junior team members who would benefit from being able to practice their presentation skills.
3. Confirm and document action items
Leave time at the end of the meeting to confirm everyone’s action items that have been assigned and document them at the bottom of the agenda.
Did Sally agree to lead next month’s meeting? Great—make sure to document it. Did Tyrell confirm he’d update the financial projections? Splendid—that should be documented. Did the CEO mention they would give everyone next Friday off? If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen.
Simplifying your agenda process
Keeping track of your meeting agenda is an important task that shouldn’t fall to the last minute, but it can feel daunting to get started. By focusing on meeting details, agenda topics, and action items, creating an agenda should be as simple as opening your laptop.
Stop wasting precious time staring at a blank page with no context about topics or decisions from the last meeting, or searching through documents trying to find when a key decision was made. Using Agenda Keeper, a meeting agenda platform, keeps all of that information in one simple place so you can easily review topics, decisions, and action items when you create your next agenda. Try it for free today.
