Meeting Agendas — Best Practices?
This is not a particularly clever or brilliant entry but is more of a question that I have been thinking about. What is the role of meeting agendas especially now that people are remote? In various organizations in the before time I have seen everything from written out, formal agendas shared in advance that include topic, lead, and allocated time, all the way to a few bullets on a slide or nothing at all. I have also seen people that wont attend without one and follow it strictly to people that look to do their own thing regardless of what is listed as an agenda.
Currently I am leaning towards a more formal agenda shared in advance as even if nobody reads it I feel like this is good discipline to spend the time to create one and respect the time you are asking people to give. On the other hand, meetings take up enough time in many roles, and putting together agendas just adds to their share of the work week. Also I think it is important to do it myself as it is usually clear when the person who didnt call the meeting didnt put together the agenda. When an organizer ignores what should be their own agenda it is a bad look. Like anything work related I am sure this depends on your role/industry etc, but I would love thoughts on what is working right now for folks and what is not.