You will be able to write an agenda that states the purpose, outcome and owner of each item.
You open a calendar invite for tomorrow's meeting. The title says "Q4 planning". The description says "Agenda: 1. Budget 2. Events 3. AOB". You don't know whether you're there to decide something, give an update or just listen, so you prepare nothing. Neither does anyone else. The first twenty minutes of the meeting are spent working out what the meeting is for.
An agenda is the cheapest tool you have for a good meeting. Ten minutes of writing the day before saves the first twenty minutes of every person in the room. It just needs to say a bit more than a list of topics.
Before any items, write one sentence that says why this meeting exists. Make it an outcome, something that is different by the end:
"Purpose: decide the Q4 event calendar and the budget split between events and digital."
Compare that with "Purpose: discuss Q4 plans". Discussing never ends, because there's no point at which you've finished discussing. Deciding has an end. When the decision is made, the meeting can finish, even if it's early.
The purpose sentence also helps people decide whether they need to come, which lesson 6.1, Decide if this needs to be a meeting at all, covered. If it says "decide the event calendar" and you have nothing to do with events, you can ask to be sent the notes instead.
If you can't write the purpose in one sentence, that's useful information. Either the meeting is trying to do too much, or you don't yet know what you want from it.
Topics like "budget" or "events" tell people the subject. They don't tell people what has to happen. Rewrite each item as an outcome or a question:
"Budget" becomes "Agree the Q4 budget split between events and digital."
"Events" becomes "Choose two of the four proposed events for November."
"Vendor" becomes "Should we renew the AV vendor contract or go to tender?"
Now each attendee knows what they're being asked for. The finance person knows to bring the numbers for the split. The person who proposed the events knows to be ready to argue for them. And the chair knows when an item is done: once the question has an answer, move on.
AOB, or any other business, deserves a word. It often becomes a place where big topics arrive without warning. If you keep it, give it five minutes at the end, and ask people to tell you in advance if they plan to raise something.
Next to every item, write how long it gets and who leads it. The owner is the person who introduces it, has done the background work and proposes a way forward.
Then order the items with decisions first. Energy and attention are highest at the start of a meeting. If decisions sit at the bottom, they get squeezed or rushed after updates have overrun. Updates that only inform can go last, or go into the pre-read and be skipped entirely.
Here's the Q4 meeting rewritten. Shu Fen, a marketing executive at a retail chain, sent this the day before, titled "Q4 planning, Thursday 3pm to 3.50pm, Meeting room 4 and Teams":
Purpose: decide the Q4 event calendar and the budget split. Agree the budget split between events and digital. Shu Fen, 15 min. Options in the attached sheet. Choose two of the four proposed November events. Arun, 20 min. Event summaries attached. Renew the AV vendor or go to tender? Grace, 10 min. Updates and AOB. 5 min. Tell Shu Fen by Wednesday if you have an item.
Four items, 50 minutes, every item with a time and an owner, and the reading attached. Anyone who opens that invite knows what to prepare.
Be realistic with times. Most items take longer than you think, especially decisions. If the total comes to more than the slot, cut items or move them to a later meeting instead of hoping people will talk faster.
An agenda that arrives five minutes before the meeting is a list of headings. People need time to read the papers, check their numbers and form a view. Send the agenda and any pre-reading at least one working day before, and more for a big decision.
Keep the pre-reading short. A one-page summary with options and a recommendation gets read. A 30-page deck gets opened in the meeting for the first time. If you need the long version, attach it and put the summary on top, following lesson 1.2, Build longer messages as a pyramid: point, reasons, detail.
In a team where people tend not to read in advance, the chair can start by giving everyone three minutes to read the one-pager in the meeting. It sounds odd the first time, and it means everyone is working from the same facts.
Find a real meeting in the next week or two that you own, or that you could offer to draft the agenda for. Before you write any items, try writing the purpose sentence and see whether it describes a result. If it does, the items usually follow from it.
Write the agenda for a real upcoming meeting with a one-line purpose and each item phrased as an outcome with a time and an owner.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).