How To Write An Agenda For A Board Meeting

Let’s face it, board meetings aren’t the most entertaining events in the business world. Sometimes they seem to drag on for hours, with multiple people discussing the same points over and over. When you’re hosting a board meeting, it’s important to remember that for people to remember or absorb what they’ve heard, they need to be engaged; and after about an hour and a half of talking, people tend to let their minds wander. Here are some tips for writing an agenda for your next board meeting to maximize engagement.

1. Detail Isn’t Always Necessary

When you think information, you probably think lots of detail, right? Well, that’s not always the case. In fact, sometimes too much detail is a detriment to good information. While relevant detail is still necessary, over-informative details on certain subjects can be incredibly exhausting.

When you’re writing the agenda for your next board meeting, keep in mind that you’re already going to be discussing numbers, policy, and company direction, all of which aren’t exactly the most engaging topics. Be sure to only provide necessary details so your presentation isn’t overly time-consuming.

2. Figure Out Exactly What Needs To Be Discussed

Often a board meeting can end up derailing into a discussion about last night’s game or even the new hires. If this is the topic of the board meeting, then by all means, but if you’re looking to stay on topic, discuss only the important topics that you’ve based the meeting around.

When you write your agenda, carefully choose what needs to be discussed. Formulate a plan to bring the conversation back on topic should it become derailed. An agenda should be composed of the topics for discussion, what goals you want to achieve during the meeting, and how to get to them.

Writing agendas is easy with meeting agenda templates. These great tools provide the user with a template they can customize, so you don’t have to start from scratch. Hosting your very first board meeting? No problem! Use an agenda to plan your meeting accordingly, and you’ll find your meetings to be incredibly efficient.

3. Ask For Suggestions From Colleagues

Asking for suggestions on what information to include from the meeting’s attendees serves a twofold purpose: it allows you to gauge what information is important to the meeting’s participants and provides you with much-needed information about problems or information you may not have even been aware of.

Always ask for the participation of your colleagues when planning meetings. They’ll feel much more involved if they have a say in what is discussed, and are less likely to become disengaged when the meeting is discussing something they’ve brought to the table.

Make sure you give your team members adequate time to provide the information you’ve requested. A day before the meeting is generally not a good time to ask for the participants what they feel should be discussed.

A week or so should be enough notice for your colleagues to gather information. This will also allow you adequate time to write your agenda and include the information they’ve provided to you.

4. Are The Problems Relevant To Everyone In Attendance?

Keep in mind that some issues can be resolved with a simple meeting between two or more people. These issues, while potentially large in scale, are usually not relevant to more than a few key players, and therefore hosting an entire meeting about them could be problematic.

Take a look at the issues you intend to discuss. How do they impact the attendees? Is everyone impacted by them, or just a few people? Meetings should be relevant to everyone in attendance, and when they aren’t, you tend to have disengagement and boredom.

You can either trim the attendance list once you’ve established your objectives or simply host a separate meeting for those that the information will have the most impact on. Write your agenda around key points that affect everyone, and be sure to explain how the information will impact those in attendance during your presentation.

5. Schedule Everything Accordingly

When you’re drafting an agenda, it’s a good idea to remember that your meeting should adhere to some kind of schedule. Set a time limit for the meeting (with some room at the end for questions) and schedule out a time allotment for each topic of discussion.

Schedule the most important topics first, so should the meeting run over the time limit, you’ve already discussed the information that will be most impactful to the attendees. Save smaller or less relevant topics for later in the meeting. There won’t be as big of an issue if these aren’t discussed in detail before the meeting concludes.

If your meeting will include other speakers, be sure to schedule an adequate time schedule for each of them, so they feel their information is important to you. Again, including the attendees in the meeting itself or the planning phase will create higher engagement and less boredom.

Conclusion

With a little planning, your meetings will take on a new life. Instead of the same old boring routine, you’ll be able to create a productive and efficient meeting from which your colleagues will draw valuable information and feel as though their voice was heard. Remember to always plan ahead, and use a template for your agenda if you’ve never written one before to maximize your meeting’s effectiveness.

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