The art of creating an effective meeting agenda
How to structure a purposeful agenda for your next meeting.
The Coda team
The art of creating an effective meeting agenda
By The Coda team
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Running better meetings might feel like an abstract goal, even when you have tools to guide your process. When we’re in need of some concrete inspiration, we turn to the companies we admire—like Google and Zapier—to see how they design their meetings. And we can’t help incorporating their insightful, actionable toolkits and guides into our own processes. As with anything in life, a little bit of planning makes all the difference between lofty ideation and execution. A thoughtful agenda is crucial to running a meeting where everyone knows what is being discussed and how they can contribute meaningfully to the conversation. In this article, we break down the steps behind creating a meeting agenda that will improve your team’s productivity. A meeting agenda is a to-do list for your meeting—your meeting goals. And while they’re not required, most productive meetings have them. At Coda, we often kickoff meetings by crowdsourcing the agenda topics in real time with voting tables. With this simple ritual, we work to eliminate bias, support our remote team members, and collaboratively prioritize the topics that should be discussed first. And because it’s a table, we can take notes alongside the discussion topics and action items for the next meeting (which makes for more organized meeting notes). The core of a meeting agenda is a group of discussion topics or tasks to accomplish during the meeting. Beyond that, the breadth of your agenda will depend on the meeting itself. If this is a standing or informal meeting that you’ve had weekly for the past year, then your agenda may be an informal mix of old and new business. If you’re in a planning meeting or creating a board meeting agenda, you might include the purpose, goal, and guidelines of the meeting. Designing a good meeting agenda is an art form—one that gets easier with practice. When creating an agenda, think less about the writing aspect and more about the elements that you need to set up a successful meeting. These are some of the most important things you should consider including in an agenda.
- Goals. Identifying goals shows attendees what needs to be accomplished in the meeting.
- Outline. List topics to discuss with clear and concise information about them that does not overwhelm attendees.
- Themes. Identify themes that will tell colleagues the topics they can expect to learn more about during the meeting.
- Supporting documentation. Point attendees to content, copy, decks, links, and presentation materials that will provide insight into the meeting.
- Allow time for each topic. Structure and schedule time for each topic so you can provide everyone with a chance to discuss them.
- Discussion. Carve out a few minutes at the end of the meeting to allow people to ask questions and share their thoughts. At this point in the meeting, attendees can bring up issues you may not have thought about.
- Final review. Use this point in the meeting to solicit feedback from attendees about what could be improved for following meetings. This time can also be used to recap meeting topics.