How to Write a Meeting Agenda

Any organized meeting needs a good agenda. This article will show you how to write such a program.

Table of Contents

Write an agenda

Agenda from the very first steps

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Start by naming your agenda. From beautiful poetry to the toughest spreadsheets, nearly every important document needs a name, and the meeting agenda is no exception. The headline should convey to the reader two issues: First, this is an agenda. Second, what is the discussion topic of the meeting. Once you’ve identified a title, place it at the top of your blank document. No need for fancy and complicated titles; Simple and direct is often best in business.

No need to use large or fancy fonts for titles. In most cases, you should stick to a simple, serious font, such as Times New Roman or Calibri, and keep the title the same (or just slightly larger) font size as the rest of the document. Remember, the purpose of headlines is to inform the reader what they are watching, not necessarily to entertain or distract them.

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Include ” who? “, ” where? ” and ” when? ” in the heading. Following the title, the meeting agenda often has a heading that can vary in detail, depending on the level of formality your organization encourages. This heading is usually one line below the heading. In general, here, you’ll want to include brief factual information about the meeting, which is unrelated to the topic being discussed. As a result, those who are not attending can know the time, place and participants. Here’s some information you’ll probably want to include on your agenda. Regardless of the information you choose, be sure to clearly “label” each piece of information (bold content names are a good choice in this case):

Date and time. Can be combined or divided into two separate parts.
Location. If your business has multiple locations, you should clearly write the address. Even if there is only one headquarters, you should also specify the name of the room where the meeting will take place (eg Meeting Room #3).
Attendees. Titles are usually optional and not required.
Special individual. It could be special guests, speakers or leaders.

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Write a brief statement of the purpose of the meeting. Meetings without clearly defined goals are more likely to waste valuable time when attendees have to determine what to talk about. Remove a line after the headline, use bold or underline to highlight your purpose section with headings like “Goal” or “Purpose”, followed by a colon or a line break . Next, in a few concise and to-the-point sentences, describe what was discussed at the meeting. Here, you should only use 1-4 sentences.

For example, if you’re writing a statement of purpose for a budget meeting, you could use: ” Goals: Outline key budget goals for the 2017-2018 fiscal year and discuss ways to cut costs In addition, Research & Development Director, Mr. Nguyen Van A will present recent competitive research results.
If you’ve ever written a scientific paper, think of a purpose statement as a conference abstract or executive summary. In essence, you are giving a generalization of what you intend to discuss in the meeting without going into details.

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Write a schedule, specifying the main points of the meeting. Scheduling helps avoid a common mistake: business meetings are often too long. Remove a single line after the purpose statement, bold or underline the title of your schedule section. Start typing content that matches the main discussion topic in the schedule. For readability, each piece of content should be written on its own line.

Divide each content item by recording the start and end times or the estimated duration of each item. Choose one and be consistent in use: mixing the two will make your agenda seem unprofessional.

Use the agenda template

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Use templates available in word processing software. Many word processing programs, such as Microsoft Office, Pages for Mac, etc. have templates for a variety of different types of personal and professional documents. These templates make writing professional documents exceptionally quick and easy. Often they are streamlined and have an eye-catching presentation. All you need to do is just enter the relevant information in the appropriate place, and that’s it!

Although editing software is a bit different, most programs that have the ability to use given templates will let you find them using the menu bar located at the top of the program window.
If your word-processing program can use a template, but none of it matches the meeting agenda, you can download a suitable template from the software developer’s website. For example, the Microsoft Word template can be downloaded from office.microsoft.com, ^{[1] X Research resources} while the Pages for Mac template can be found on the App store.

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Or you can also download templates from third parties. If your word processor doesn’t have any agenda templates, even from the official website, don’t worry: there are tons of free templates online. A simple search on your favorite search engine for “meeting agenda template” will yield dozens of related results. However, not all of these results come from official and reputable sources, so it is important to be wise in choosing the right sample to use. Here are a few third-party websites you might want to visit:

Save Word Templates ^{[2] X Research Sources} . This is a professional site that provides a variety of quality templates for Microsoft Word.
Word Templates Online ^{[3] X Research Resources} . Another good choice for Word document templates. However, this page only has a few options.
iWorkCommunity ^{[4] X Research Sources} . A good agenda template for Pages. However, this template is for older (before ’09) versions of Pages.
The App Store also has many templates for Pages. Unfortunately not all are free. ^{[5] X Research Sources}

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Fill in the blanks in your form. Once you’ve found the right template in your word processor or downloaded the template you like, all you need to do is fill in the required information. Most templates will have clearly marked areas for you to enter your name, time, discussion topic, section titles and the like. Please complete all relevant information to complete the agenda. Once completed, you need to check carefully to check for errors. While convenient, the agenda template doesn’t eliminate errors in spelling, grammar, and factual information on its own.

Don’t leave any space blank. There’s nothing more amateurish than a schedule with the text “Type content here”. If you don’t want to fill out certain sections of the form for certain reasons, be sure to delete that section instead of leaving it blank.

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Make small adjustments to the agenda to suit your needs. Program templates can be incredibly convenient, but there’s no reason you should stick to its built-in style and formatting. Don’t hesitate to change the content and style of your template so that it matches industry standards and your choice of expertise.

For example, if you really like the look of a certain template but its headings are too long and distracting, feel free to remove the excess from your point of view, as long as it won’t ruin the definition. the format of the document or negatively affect the agenda.

The best ways to use the agenda

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Sort the most important topics first. When planning a meeting, it is often a good strategy to dedicate the first part of your schedule to the most important topics. By doing so, you will be assured of two things. First, people will be able to discuss these topics very early, when they are most alert and least tired. Second, in case the meeting has to end early or someone needs to leave the meeting before it ends, the important topic has already been discussed.

Meetings don’t always go according to plan. If there are small, unimportant topics that are cut off at the end of the meeting, you can work them out on your own, or schedule another meeting later. However, if major topics of discussion cannot be adopted, the meeting has failed to achieve an important part of its organizational purpose, and can therefore be considered a failure. Placing these items at the top of the schedule often avoids this problem.

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Flexible schedule based. When it comes to planning and coordinating meetings, one of the biggest threats is the meeting running out of time. In general, employees hate overtime meetings, for good reasons: They can be incredibly boring and cause people to delay getting things done. Make sure your meeting stays on schedule by keeping track of the time, and when given the opportunity, politely move on to the next section with statements similar to: “To get home on time, we’ll move on. Let’s move on to the next topic.”

Even so, meetings often don’t go as planned, and you’ll have to be prepared to make adjustments if something takes longer than expected. Be flexible in trying to discuss as many ideas as you can within a predetermined time limit. For example, if this section is stretched, you may need to shorten the discussion time in other sections or completely omit relatively unimportant sections to ensure the meeting ends on time (To reduce time pressure, you can strategically add optional content).

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Start writing the agenda early before the meeting takes place. Agendas are important: They show professionalism, showing attendees that you value their time and contribution to the organization. So make sure you have enough time to produce a quality document by starting to write the program as reasonably early as possible.

Starting early also helps you gather feedback on the agenda before the meeting actually begins and adjusts. Sharing drafts with colleagues or supervisors and consulting with them can help you fix errors and add missing information. If you wait until the last moment to write, you won’t have time to gather and adjust based on feedback.
With the usual daily meetings, you probably won’t have any trouble writing the agenda just a day before the meeting. However, with important meetings, it will likely take you weeks to prepare.

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Share the agenda with attendees before the meeting takes place. This will ensure that everyone is fully aware of the topics to be discussed. Depending on the company culture, this could mean printing multiple copies and handing them out in person, or simply sharing them electronically, such as emailing and attaching documents. Either way, before sharing, make sure your document is free of any technical errors.

Depending on the importance of the meeting, you may want to deliver the agenda to attendees at least an hour or two before the meeting. With a large and important meeting, it may be necessary to move ahead a day or even more.
Since people are often busy, it’s smart to bring a few backup copies to meetings, in case someone forgets to bring them.

Advice

Depending on your colleagues’ wishes, it can be helpful to set a deadline for people to suggest additional ideas on the agenda. Set a final date and time to receive a proposal and stick to it. Edits are accepted if they add to the agenda or are simply more important than your original content.
A great tool to have a productive meeting is to use “OARR”: These are the initials of the English words Objective (Goal), Agenda (Agenda), Rpes (Role) & Responsibilities. First, the meeting needs to have a goal . If you’re only meeting to disseminate information, don’t waste everyone’s time. Send them a newsletter. Goals should have a positive component and, if possible, yield something: “Determine the team’s quarterly goals”. An agenda is a list of topics you will discuss to achieve that goal, with a time limit to help you stay on track. For example: “1. Review the status of the goals set for the previous quarter (15 minutes), 2. Discuss goal proposals (20 minutes), 3. Select the top 5 goals (10 minutes), etc.” For Roles & Responsibilities, define who is hosting the meeting, who is taking notes, and who will assign actions/”must-do” items from the meeting.
If someone is unable to attend, consider creating an “Apologize in advance” section at the top of the agenda, or leave it blank and simply announce it during the meeting.
If your company has its own conference agenda template, use it as a template. In some places, it is extremely important to adhere to a given pattern.

Steps

Write an agenda

Agenda from the very first steps

Use the agenda template

The best ways to use the agenda

Advice

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