The most important part of a meeting

Question

What is the most important part of a meeting?

Answer

The agenda.

If you get invited to a meeting that only has a title, ask for an agenda. If the agenda is only the title of the meeting, ask for a detailed agenda.

If people cannot prepare an agenda for a meeting, then there is no point in meeting. A meeting with no preparation will generally be ineffective simply because it will be spent either sharing information, something that could have been done without meeting, or actually doing preparatory work for something that would deserve to be done in a group, but not as a meeting in itself.

If you need to make some decisions with a few people, then prepare the list of decisions that will be made during the meeting.

Make sure that your meetings have an agenda. You will get a lot more out of your meeting because you will know the outcome you expect out of them.

References

• Meetings
• What does a productive meeting look like?