Make agenda items with action steps in meetings
Posted on June 18, 2024 by Martin Hahn, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
This article discusses the importance to add action steps to the agenda of meetings
I have attended many meetings in my career and presentations over the years, and they’ve come in different sizes and shapes. Some have been team meetings. Some have been a briefing for our CEO. Some were to inform important people in the public domain about a new initiative our company was about to embark on. Some were to inform our board of directors.
Unfortunately, I’ve also too often noticed the person who is presenting dives into the subject matter without giving the audience an adequate feel and context for what is to come, and the audience is quickly left behind while the presenter goes on and on.
As I progressed in my career, I began to serve on a few boards of directors, and I learned it was common for the company’s management to prepare for the board of directors a relatively small binder of information they could read well ahead of the meeting. It was typically filled with important information for the board to digest so they could come to the meeting well prepared to quickly contribute to the discussion.
Although providing the briefing material to the board was very helpful, after reading the material we board members too often found it difficult to discern what the management team wanted from us. Was the material only for our information? Was it to give the management team our advice? Did the management team want from us an approval to commit a certain amount of money to a new project? Or was it something else altogether?
After being somewhat frustrated over the course of a few meetings at not knowing what to expect from management regarding what they would seek from us directors, I decided to create a one-page overview template that would be the lead-in to each topic on the agenda. It was designed for the management team to fill out much like a questionnaire. After completion, it would be added to the binder prior to it being distributed to the board. The overview template included important questions to be considered for the board’s benefit on each topic.
This was especially useful because board members are not at the company on a daily basis. Instead, they typically meet with management only every other month or quarterly, and they need to be updated succinctly and incisively when the board meeting is about to roll around. The completed template would inform the board of the important considerations related to the upcoming discussions and would also suggest management’s thoughtful answers and options to the possibilities, along with a recommendation for action.
I proposed the template concept to the CEO. He liked the idea, and we tested it with a few board members. There was an enthusiastic reception for it. We then bounced ideas off of one another for tweaking the template, which led to it being improved by adding a few questions and deleting a few others.
I would love to lay claim to the naming of the template, but our CEO, came up with it. After looking at the final version of the template, Earle said, “Aren’t we trying to find out what the relevant points are? Just prior to the next board meeting, we put the template in the board’s binders, complete with key questions related to the topics at hand, along with potential options for the board to consider.
As the discussions were about to conclude, management and the board agreed on a course of action. I was pleased to see the enthusiasm for the template idea from all board members. This meeting agenda page now precedes any important topic the board is about to discuss. In effect, it frees up the presentation so board members are on the same page with management from the outset. In doing so, the board becomes acutely aware of why the matter is being presented, what management feels the best options are and what action the board is being asked to approve.
After a few more board meetings, we discovered the template could be modified when necessary, depending on the subject matter and the questions to be put in front of the board It’s important to note the usefulness of a meeting agenda with actions added doesn’t have to be limited to boards of directors. It can be used to benefit your supervisor.
Moreover, it can be used, for instance, if you are presenting to a City Council or a County Board of Supervisors. I’m sure they, too, would appreciate it. The possibilities are endless, and you may soon become known for your strong communication skills and ability to positively impact meetings that are more streamlined and productive.
