Creating a meeting agenda: 7 tips for your efficient meeting planning

Follow the ideal: one meeting, one topic, one goal. After all, a meeting can only be effective if the goal can be defined at all and has been defined and communicated to all participants beforehand. So, already when compiling the agenda, determine which goal or which insight the meeting is supposed to produce. The selection and sequence of the agenda items is based on this objective.

Therefore, at the beginning of each meeting, also plan a fixed agenda item in your agenda where you briefly pick up all participants and inform them what the goal of the meeting is. Briefly clarify the questions:

• Where are we in relation to topic XY?
• Why is it important that we address it?
• What decisions regarding XY do we want to have made after this meeting?

Every meeting needs a venue and a time. Of course, this is equally true for remote meetings or hybrid meetings. In these cases, a URL to a virtual meeting room in Jitsi, Zoom, Webex or Teams replaces or supplements the information about the physical meeting room. When inviting all participants to a meeting, make it clear whether the meeting is a face-to-face meeting, an online meeting as a video conference or a hybrid meeting, and, if applicable, which participants will take part and in what form.

From the topics themselves and the event form derive the requirements for IT and other inventory that you need to provide as part of the meeting preparation. For example, you should plan more time for the planning and preparation of a hybrid meeting, as you need to ensure ideal sound and image conditions for both physically present and digitally connected participants.

... and too many opinions hinder decisions. Therefore, only those people should be present in each meeting who are indispensable for achieving the meeting goal. If it is a fixed group of participants, e.g. a team weekly, the topics should be selected so that each participant can contribute something or derive essential knowledge for his future work.

Every meeting therefore needs a competent moderator who is respected by all participants. His or her task is to ensure that

• each topic is dealt with in the allotted time,
• discussions proceed in an orderly fashion,
• digressions are stopped immediately,
• each participant contributes his or her point of view,
• ideas and further input are noted at the agenda item, and
• a clear result is achieved and recorded.

The moderator should not necessarily be the boss or an executive. If the supervisor is in charge of the meeting, this can lead to some participants making a particular mark and pushing their opinions to the forefront, while others withdraw and want to attract as little attention as possible. Instead, a moderator should be appointed from within the team. It is also advisable to pass on the role at regular intervals and to invest in moderation or rhetoric training in the medium term.

Often topics are packed into a meeting that do not concern all participants. The result: Half of the participants are bored, while the other half shamble from sub-topic to sub-topic and get lost in detailed discussions. Therefore, when creating the meeting agenda, you should make sure that you only include topics that really concern everyone. If this is not possible, we recommend dividing the meeting into several sections:

• In the first section, topics that are relevant to everyone are discussed.
• In the second section, only those people whose presence is required for the following topics remain in the room.

In the case of such a division, you should already clearly communicate in the agenda from when to when the presence of each individual participant is required.

Whoever proposes a topic should at the same time indicate how long the topic should be discussed ("time boxing"). Define the duration of your meeting in advance and fill this time frame with the proposed topics in descending order of priority: the most important topics first, less important topics or topics concerning only some of the participants at the end.

Agenda planning should therefore be carried out by a person who can best assess the urgency of the various topics. Furthermore, the person must also have the necessary authority to be able to push or delete less important topic proposals.

To make it clear from the outset how much interaction is expected to work through a meeting topic, it makes sense to categorize the agenda items. For example, the IDE principle is recommended:

• Information (I): Participants should be informed about a specific topic. Questions are to be expected, but no discussion is to take place.
• Discussion (D): A problem is presented. To find a solution or a decision, the participants should work out proposals and discuss them together.
• Decision (E -"Entscheidung" in German): Different decision options are presented. Participants are asked to choose one option without much discussion or questioning.

If discussions and decisions are expected, all participants have time in advance to deal mentally with the issues at hand.

At Projektron, the categorization of agenda items is primarily based on the number of participants in the meeting and the quantity of topics. The weekly sales meeting, for example, serves primarily to bring all participants up to date, i.e. to provide information (I). Discussions and also decisions usually take place beforehand in smaller meetings. In the weekly marketing meeting, on the other hand, the proportion of discussion (D) and decision (E) is significantly higher. The aim here is to obtain different opinions, gather creative input from all sides, discuss the proposals and make joint decisions on this basis.

During the course of the meeting, continuously document all significant contributions, alternative proposals and results. The moderator - or a separately appointed secretary in the case of larger numbers of participants - should make this as transparent and comprehensible as possible. Ideally, this information should be noted directly at the relevant agenda item and all participants should be allowed to view the transcripts both during the meeting itself and afterwards. Document resolutions and agreements on an ongoing basis during the meeting, giving all participants the good feeling that they are making rapid progress and achieving good results.

It is useful for everyone present to be able to review the results of a meeting afterwards. The advantages:

• No one has to take notes themselves during the meeting.
• If necessary, concrete results and requests for action can be tracked at any time.
• Participants who are absent, for example due to illness, can update themselves independently and do not need a time-consuming private update afterwards.

It is often found at the end of a meeting agenda as the last item on the agenda: "Other". The idea behind this item may well be a noble one: Each participant should be given the opportunity to bring up the topics that are burning under their nails and discuss them together.

However, this is not in the spirit of a structured and efficient meeting agenda. In fact, inviting participants to choose their own topics carries some risks:

• Participants sometimes bring up topics that had nothing to do with the actual focus of the meeting.
• Topics introduced by participants harbor a high potential for conflict and discussion, which can easily break the time frame.
• Spontaneously raised topics are often presented in a one-sided, tendentious manner and are not subject to any objective corrective, since the moderator has no opportunity to prepare for the topic in terms of content.

But how do you still guarantee that every employee gets a chance to speak and raise their concerns? Allow each team member to propose a topic. As the meeting organizer, you then decide during agenda planning which topics fit the content of the next meeting and which topics could be an addition or even an enrichment. Clear software helps to manage topic suggestions wisely and simplify planning.

Items that do not fit into an agenda can be collected and scheduled on a special date with a fixed time frame. Some topics may also be better suited for a personal, bilateral discussion or for discussion in a meeting group with a different composition.