Boring Meetings Suck: Get More Out of Your Meetings, or Get Out of More Meetings

Having No Agenda Sucks

Meetings with no agendas are like road trips with no maps. They can be fun and spontaneous, and you never know where you might end up. This no-structure approach felt great when my brother Tim and I headed down to Panama City for spring break in college, but it flat-out sucks when talking about a productive meeting.

If you have a stated purpose for your meeting, the agenda will naturally follow as part of your preparation. If you plan to conduct a meeting that encompasses other people's time, then it deserves to have serious thought put into it. An agenda doesn't have to be complex. Rather, it has to guarantee your understanding that you need to create one!

I confess, I find it a tad alarming I have to address such an essential meeting concept here. But the fact is that most people still don't understand the basics of an agenda. They either don't take the time to create one or don't know how.

I've often been asked, “Why is an agenda essential when, for example, it's the same four people working through the changes in a proposal? In such a case, is an agenda really necessary?” You bet it is! Otherwise, your group meeting has no form, no structure, and no idea of what should take place. This in turn leads you down the path of multiple sucky meeting types as discussed in Agenda Item 6. And no one likes sucky meetings. No one.

On the flip side, you might have created an ineffective agenda and sent it to attendees. When that happens, people simply won't come prepared ...