Meetings & notes21 categories
Design an agenda that earns the hour
Before sending a calendar invite that would otherwise just have a title.
Write an agenda for this meeting. 1. State the **purpose** in one sentence, as an outcome: what will be true at the end that is not true now. If the purpose is only "discuss", say the meeting is not ready to be scheduled. 2. List each item with: its type (decide, input, inform), the time allocated, and who leads it. 3. Put the decision items first, while attention is highest. 4. For every item marked inform, ask whether it could be read instead, and mark the ones that could. 5. List who genuinely needs to be there for each item, and who could leave after theirs. 6. Name the pre-read, if any, and what people should have done before arriving. End with the one item most likely to overrun and how to time-box it. Meeting purpose and topics:
Making it yours
- Paste your own material where the prompt asks for it. Everything above that line is instruction, not content.
- Delete any rule that does not apply to you. A shorter prompt that fits beats a thorough one that does not.
- If the answer comes back vague, add a line saying what you do not want. Constraints work better than encouragement.
Before and during. Agendas, pre-reads, prep for a 1:1 or an exec slot, and plans for retros and workshops.
Related prompts
Write a pre-read people will actually readWhen the meeting only works if everyone arrives with the same context.Prepare for a one-to-oneFifteen minutes before a 1:1 you would otherwise improvise.Plan and facilitate a retrospectiveRunning a retro that should produce change rather than a list of grumbles.Prepare to present to executivesYou have ten minutes with senior people and a deck built for forty.Structure a brainstorm that produces somethingBefore a session where the loudest person would otherwise set the direction.Plan a half-day workshopFacilitating a longer session and needing a minute-by-minute plan.
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