How can you effectively communicate the purpose and goals of the meeting through an agenda?

First define a meeting outcome. This describes what the meeting will try to accomplish. For example: To make a decision, to brainstorm on new ideas for project x, to finalize the presentation for next quarterly review.

One thing i have found helpful in all our meetings is the SMART principle towards all our meetings, specific items, measurable, achievable, relevant and time based, having this framework has worked best for all my meetings and having a visual board to craft our discussions on, in addition assigning responsibilities like scribe and time keeper and lastly the Reviewer who takes us through reflections from last meeting has always made our meetings productive. Everyone wants a clear direction prior to a meeting and wants to have a vision of effectiveness by reflecting on how other meetings have improved results.

Setting the context of the meeting as precursor to defining the purpose and goals helps integrate what has been done or highlight what the situation needs now. This is particularly important when there is a high level of uncertainty or discussing change. In these situations, consider the psychological state of your potential participants as well as the content that you wish to cover. You may find that using SMART constrains the discussion and instead use other tools including those from design thinking. On the other hand, if you have a standing meeting that occurs regularly, it's good to review the focus and content of the meeting agenda periodically to ensure you are focusing on what's needed now and not simply business as usual.

Collaborating agenda items can be critical for bringing in a more powerful agenda. I used to work on a team that had a spreadsheet you could fill out your topics and people could vote it up or down based on the time to delivery or impact. This openness to others to help devise the team agenda allowed for topics important to the team, but often forgotten or ignored by the leader of the meeting. Authorship breeds ownership.

When designing the agenda, decide if your meeting is to entertain participants in which case, design it for engagement OR if the purpose of the meeting is to do work. Work does require effort. It may benefit from boredom. There may be tedium. What interests one person may not interest another. If big or sensitive decisions are required, focus on how you can make the process effective rather than efficient. This may require you to be willing to let go of some items on the agenda in the interest of the key items that will advance you towards your bigger goals. Note: If the meeting has a governance or compliance duty to fill (eg an AGM), respect the needs for due process while you cover what you need to cover.

It is important to to be clear on the purpose of the meeting. If it is to generate ideas, it becomes important to hear everyone’s perspective. If it’s about decision making, it becomes imperative to align views and reach a conclusion.

The way I organize agenda items is by priority. If there are tasks that need to be completed and events coming up, I organize everything by dates. Tasks (action items) are delegated to team members before or during the meeting and then sent in minutes after the meeting. If anyone sees that there are items missing for action items, then can add to the list. Simple, and to the point. As each item gets completed, check them off the list. The point is to get the work DONE, not dwell in analysis paralysis.

I had a leader that would request the meeting be rescheduled or cancel if the agenda was not provided at least 24 hours in advance.

In case participants need to prepare and present in the meeting, a template could be shared or slides from presenters should be requested accordingly.

I find it useful to agree objectives at the beginning of the meeting & what we want to achieve before the end of the meeting. Also everyone appreciates when we get through the agenda & finish 5-10 minutes early.

An approach I borrow from Agile methodology is to request feedback from meetings to see how the agenda can be revised or done better next time. I think we should always seek to find feedback as a built-in feature of meetings, as some meetings may not always be necessary, and if we can eliminate some, we improve the impact of those that are needed.

I think it’s important to ensure that while following the agenda we ensure that everyone gets to have their say on each of the topics even if it’s just to say, I don’t have anything to add. Sometimes you might need to go off topic if something else comes up that also fits into what the meeting is about. This may mean dropping something that isn’t so important now. This could mean extending the meeting or tabling the item till the next meeting.