Meeting Management & Agendas

• How much money do you spend annually on meetings?
  
• Do people show up on time, follow an agenda, and end the meetings on time?
  
• Do meetings regularly create and review actions?
  

Meetings need structure and process, yet most meetings happen because of momentum.  "We always meet on Fridays as a team."  We meet to discuss and communicate.  Yet this discussion is typically around individual status updates, and less about what needs to happen, or hurdles that need to be cleared.

Shouldn't every meeting have a well defined purpose to specifically create an action.  Change "meet to review project status" to "meet to analyze project performance, understand risks, and make recommendations."  Now we go from asking people to attend the meeting TO preparing the team for the meeting. Roles and tasks should be assigned and materials need to be reviewed prior to the meeting.

Here is a link to Seth Godin's blog on the same subject - Getting Serious about your Meeting Problem