I have simple rules for meetings.

Meeting or an email/instant message?

Attending meetings is NOT work. You attend meetings to be involved in a discussion. If you don’t need to say anything, or write notes, then you probably shouldn’t be there.

If you really must invite everyone, differentiate between required and optional invitees so the group knows who is a decision maker and who is there to observe.

Try to only invite the people who need to be there. Share minutes, packs, etc. with interested parties.

No agenda? Don’t attend

Show some respect for the people you are inviting to a meeting - let them know what the meeting is about by using an agenda.

Be prescriptive.

What does this agenda even mean?

Please join the XYZ team for a monthly connection session where we will cover all things ABC and XYZ.

Are we talking business strategy, or what biscuits we should be buying? If I have a conflicting commitment how can I assess which one to attend?

What about this meeting invitation I received:

Title: Stewart & XYZ - Data

Agenda: Sorry to keep changing the date

It was clearly a little important to the person, they kept changing the date - clearly not very important as they let other meetings book over the top of an existing one - but why do I care about it? What do I need to do?

Check my calendar

Again, this is about respect. Check my calendar. Try to find a free slot. Don’t just book the first time that works for you.

People are reasonable, if you can’t find a slot that works, reach out to the person and explain your difficulty. Most people will suggest a time or reschedule things.

Pre-reading?

Equivalently, don’t assume people have hours of free time to read your pack before attending a meeting.

I rather like the Amazon approach to meetings. Most meetings won’t follow this approach. However, here’s a small step in the right direction:

If there is something important for people to read and digest, give them time in your meeting. That way you will know everyone has the same knowledge when it comes to contributing.

Timing

Start your meeting on time. Finish it early. A number of tools now let you default to 20/45 minute meetings rather than the full 30/60 minutes.

This is not a new concept, but sadly it needs reinforcing.

Minutes and actions

Get someone to take minutes. Understand the point of taking minutes - it’s not to capture what everyone said, it’s to capture the consensus.

Capture action items. If there are no actions that are coming from the meeting then you should have just sent an informative message.

Send the minutes and actions to attendees and interested parties.

Reality check

Like with most things in life, it’s never that simple.

My teams know that I will support them by declining (with a polite explanation) meetings that don’t have an agenda. They also know there are exceptions. It’s about being reasonable - a critical meeting; if anyone above them in the organisational structure: i.e. me (I occasionally break my own rules), the CEO, (actually any of the C-Suite); others of their choosing - organises a meeting without an agenda, they need to attend.

When I do it, they’re encouraged to poke the bear and remind me to send an agenda.