10 Actions to Make Your Office Meetings Effective and Efficient  

I received great advice from a former manager that has stayed with me through the years: “Never accept an invitation to a meeting unless there’s an agenda.” I love this advice because when you invite a group of coworkers to a meeting, each has to make room for you on their calendar and adjust their weekly task list to accommodate your meeting. And if you tallied up all of their salaries for the time you’re asking of them, is having a meeting worth that cost to the company? Thus, setting an agenda is the first step in hosting an effective meeting, for anyone, at any level of their career.

Before setting up a meeting, you should first evaluate the important issue of whether you can accomplish what you need to get done via email. Questions to ask: Are you asking for sign-off on one part of a larger project everyone is already prepped on, or are you anticipating needing a back-and-forth discussion across multiple topics related to advancing your project forward? The former should take place over email (it saves everyone time), while the latter can clearly best be accomplished in person.

If you realize that a round table/face-to-face is needed, here are 10 tips for running an effective meeting:

1. Do I Need to Send an Email or Call a Meeting? Decide first, as noted above, whether you need just an email or a meeting to accomplish your task(s).

2. Define who Needs to Attend — and Be Strict. Review the list of stakeholders and determine if each person will have a speaking part in your meeting. Eliminate those who don’t. The goal is to strive for smaller, more productive meetings.

3. Summarize the Purpose for your Meeting. In your meeting invite, include a short 1-2 sentence description of your project, the reason for this meeting, and your attendees’ presence. Is there a decision that needs to be made, or is the meeting primarily to educate and discuss? Make sure you know the answer, and then share that with everyone attending.

4. Attach or Include a Complete Agenda with a bulleted or numbered list of action items to be covered, and owners (if applicable) for each; this gives attendees advance notice so they aren’t surprised in the meeting, and can be prepared for the meeting with their input. This keeps your project moving faster.

5. Be Thoughtful about When you Schedule the Meeting. Always try to reserve meeting time five days out; it can be unpleasant to receive a meeting invite when your calendar is already booked. Try to look ahead (if you can) to select a time/day that works best for all attendees. Be sensitive to early and late meetings (if you know the personalities of those you are inviting), e.g., is someone especially grumpy in early morning meetings? Do folks tend to leave for their commutes by 5? Also, keep your meetings to a half-hour; that way you can move quickly through the items on your agenda, and folks are more likely to accept/attend a shorter meeting.

6. Send a Reminder. One or two days before your meeting, send a reminder via email to any stakeholders whose input you are relying on to advance your project. Ask them if the meeting time still works, and whether they can come prepared to deliver x, while thanking them in advance for making time to support your project.

7. Have a Copy of your Agenda either Printed Out or Visible on a whiteboard (or accessible via your invite) when the meeting starts.

8. Remind Everyone Why You’re There, thank them, and proceed through the itemed agenda list, taking notes as you go, and letting them know you’ll be sending around a summary of action items immediately after the meeting. Take notes directly within the agenda so that these points accompany the meeting notes when you send the summary.
Pro tip: You can even use this as a  launch plan and send updates when action items get accomplished or deprioritized. It can thus become a handy historical tool especially if this project will be repeated in the future.

9. Wrap Up and Quickly Summarize what the group accomplished, and within one hour following your meeting, email the summary, action items, and follow-up requests to the same group who attended.
Pro tip: Doing this step has the added benefit of being useful to you when you sit down to write your annual performance review. You already have a summary of what you’ve worked on, and those with whom you worked closely throughout the year. Save these email summaries in an email folder marked “Performance Review.”

10. Get or Give Feedback. If this was a contentious meeting, or you felt that an individual really went above and beyond, then now is the time to thank them in person or take them for coffee to strengthen that bond. If you have just run your first meeting, this is also a great time to seek out some fast feedback from one or two colleagues to gauge your progress and get their input on how you did.

Meeting Agenda Template

Here’s a sample template to help kickstart your own meeting agenda and notes. (Please use the comments section to describe how it went for you and any improvements you made in running your own effective meetings!)

Meeting Agenda and Invite Template: 

To: Attendee 1, Attendee 2, Attendee 3, Attendee 4
cc: Self
Subject: Meeting to Review Launch Plans for Project X

Description: Project X launches Wednesday November XX and finishes Tuesday December XX. This project will contain five campaigns shared across some or all channels. Let’s use this time to decide on creative, channels, revenue goals, and resolve open issues.

Project Team:
Project Manager – Attendee 1
Editorial – Attendee 2
Marketing – Attendee 3
Finance – Attendee 4 

Agenda for [Day/Month] Meeting:

• Project X status (5 min) — Project Manager
• Open questions to resolve prior to launch (20 min) — Project Manager to lead
  • Q: Do we have all design elements created and approved? Owner: Marketing/Editorial
  • Q: Which channels will host Project X, plus estimated cost? Owner: Marketing/Editorial
  • Q: What are the revenue goals for Project X? Owner: Finance
  • Q: Do we have enough resources assigned to launch Project X? Owner: Project Manager
  • Q: Known risks that block launch of Project X? Owner: Project Manager
•      Summary of decisions and action items (5 min) — Project Manager