Pet & Animal: How to Write an Agenda for a Meeting

An organized meeting needs a well-written agenda. Don't let your meeting become the overlong, inefficient slog that so many meetings seem to devolve into. By sticking to a detailed yet flexible agenda, you can keep your meeting streamlined and focused, ensuring that you meet all of your goals for your meeting in the shortest amount of time possible. Whether you're looking to write your own agenda, use a template, or make the most of an agenda you already have, see Step 1 below to get started!

Steps

Writing an Agenda

Making an Agenda from Scratch

Start by giving your agenda a title. From the most beautiful literature to the driest spreadsheet, almost every important document needs a title, and meeting agendas are no exception. Your title should tell the reader two things: First, that s/he is reading an agenda, and second, what topic the meeting is covering. When you've made a decision, place your title at the top of your blank document. The title doesn't have to flowery or complicated — in a business context, simple and direct titles are usually the best.
- Resist the urge to use fancy or large fonts for your title. In most situations, you'll want to use a plain, dignified font like Times New Roman or Calibri and to make your title the same size as the rest of the lettering on the document (or only slightly larger). Remember, the purpose of your title is to inform readers of what they are looking at, not necessarily to amuse or distract them.

Include "who?", "where?", and "when?" information in the header. Next, after the title, meeting agendas usually have a header which can vary in detail depending upon the level of formality your workplace encourages. This header is usually located about one line below the title. Generally, in the header, you'll want to include brief factual information about the meeting that doesn't have to do with the topic being discussed. This is so that people who aren't at the meeting can tell when and where it occurred and who was there. Below are some of the things you may want to include; regardless of the information you choose, be sure to clearly label each piece of information (bolding the label text works well here):
- Date and time. These can be grouped together or in their own separate sections.
- Location. If your business has multiple locations, you may want to write the address, whereas if it has just one location, you may want to name the room you're meeting in (e.g., Conference Room #3).
- Attendees. Job titles are usually optional but not required.
- Special individuals present. These may be special guests, speakers, or meeting leaders.

Write a brief objective statement. Meetings that don't have a clearly-defined purpose risk wasting precious time as attendees decide what to talk about. Skip a line after your header and use bolded or underlined text to label your objective section with a title like "Objective" or "Purpose", followed by a colon or a line break. Then, in a few concise and to-the-point sentences, describe the items of discussion for the meeting. Aim to write about 1-4 sentences here.
- For instance, if we're looking to write an objective statement for a budget meeting, we might use this one: "Objective: To outline key budget goals for the 2014-2015 fiscal year and discuss long-term cost-cutting measures. Additionally, R & D Director Marcus Feldman will present the results of a recent competitiveness study."
- If you've ever written in a scientific context, think of the objective statement as the meeting's abstract or executive summary. You're essentially saying, in broad strokes, what you plan to be discussed at the meeting without going into any detail.

Write a schedule for the main points of the meeting. Schedules help combat the common flaw that business meetings have for running far, far too long. Skip a line after your objective statement, give your schedule a bolded or underlined title, then begin making entries (which should correspond to the main topics of discussion) in your schedule. For ease of reading, give each entry its own line.
- Label each entry with either the time you plan for it to begin and end or the amount of time you plan for each entry to take. Pick one system or the other and be consistent — mixing and matching looks unprofessional.
- In other words, you'll want to label each schedule entry with either the start and end times for which you'd like that topic of conversation to take place during or simply specify how long you'd like it to take. For instance, one sample entry might look like either "2:00 - 2:05: Introductions and roll call" or "5 min: Introductions and roll call". You would, however, avoid switching between the two labeling systems.

Allocate time in the schedule for any special guests. If any guests are coming to your meeting to discuss topics of importance, you'll want to devote a chunk of the meeting's time to these people. Plan on assigning each guest a single schedule entry even if s/he has more than one topic of discussion.This way, each one will be able to organize his or her topics as s/he sees fit.
- To avoid embarrassing scheduling conflicts, contact the guests ahead of time to figure out how much time each one will need for their discussion topic.

Leave extra time at the end of the meeting for Q&A. During this time, people can ask for clarification about confusing topics of discussion, offer their own follow-up opinions, suggest topics for future meetings, and make other comments. You can make this Q&A time explicit by including it as the final entry in your schedule or you can simply bring it up yourself after the final point of the meeting.
- If you reach the end of your meeting and no one has any additional questions to ask or comments to make, you can always end the meeting early. Many of your attendees will likely be thankful for this!

Optionally, provide an outline of the discussion topics. Generally, the schedule is the "meat" of the meeting agenda — the part that people will look to to guide the discussion. However, while it isn't essential to go this extra mile, providing an additional outline of key points can be a big help for confused meeting attendees. An outline allows attendees to have a reminder of the organisation of ideas presented at the meeting, helping people who have a hard time keeping track of every single topic mentioned. Below is a sample of the type of outline organization you will probably want to use (see How to Write an Outline for more information):
- I. High-priority Budget Items
  - A. Employee travel budget
    
    B. Dealership fees
    - i. Negotiating a better deal?
    C. Lobbying costs
  II. Revenue-boosting Measures
  - A. Alternative service deals
    - i. Presenting options to customers
      
      ii. Soliciting feedback
    B. Re-investment in mobile technology
  ...and so on.

Check the agenda for errors before distributing it. Because some attendees may end up relying heavily on the meeting agenda, it's a very wise idea to proofread it for errors before giving it out. Doing so isn't just a courtesy to the attendees — it also reflects positively on your attention to detail and the value you have for your position.
- Additionally, ensuring there are no errors in your agenda can save you time and face, as spending time explaining an error-riddled agenda can get your meeting off track and be embarrassing for you, especially if important people are in attendance.

Using an Agenda Template

Use a template included with a word processor. Many word processing programs, like Microsoft Office, Pages for Mac, and so on, have pre-made templates for a variety of personal and professional documents, which may include agendas for meetings. These templates make it remarkably quick and easy to produce a professional-looking document. Typically, these types of templates are pre-organized into logical sections with an aesthetically-pleasing arrangement — all you need to do is type the relevant information into the appropriate spaces and you're ready to go!
- Though every word processor is slightly different, most that have the ability to use templates will allow you to navigate to the templates by using the menu bar at the top of the program's window.
- If your word processor can use templates, but doesn't have any templates suitable for meeting agendas, you may be able to download one from the program's creator's website. For instance, Microsoft Word templates are available from office.microsoft.com^[1], while templates for Pages for Mac can be found on the Apple App store.

Alternatively, download a template from a third-party source. If your word processor doesn't come with any included agenda templates and you can't obtain any from its official site, don't worry — there are tons of free templates available online. A simple search on your preferred search engine for a query like "meeting agenda template" should yield dozens of relevant results. However, since not all of these results will be from official, reputable sources, it's important to be discriminating when it comes to choosing which templates to use. Below are a few third-party sites you may want to visit:
- Save Word Templates^[2] —This professional site offers many quality templates for Microsoft Word.
- Word Templates Online^[3] — Another good source for Word templates. However, this page offers only a few options.
- iWorkCommunity^[4] — a good Pages agenda template. However, this template is for older (pre-'09) versions of Pages.
- The App Store also has numerous templates for Pages. Unfortunately, not all of these are available for free.^[5]

Fill out the fields in your template. Once you've located a suitable template in your word processor or downloaded one that you like, all you need to do is fill out the template with the necessary information. Most templates will have clearly-marked areas for you to type in names, times, topics for discussion, section titles, and so forth. Fill in all relevant fields to complete your agenda, then, when you're done, quickly check your work for errors. As convenient as agenda templates can be, they don't protect against spelling, grammar, and factual mistakes.
- Don't leave any fields blank. Nothing looks less professional than, for instance, having a schedule entry that reads only "Type here". If, for some reason, there are parts of the template you don't want to fill out, be sure to delete these rather than leave them unfilled.

Make minor modifications to make your agenda fit your needs. Templates for meeting agendas can be incredibly convenient, but there's no reason why you might need to stick to the agenda's pre-prepared style and format exactly. Feel free to make changes to the template's content and style as you see fit to ensure that your agenda meets the standards that your business has set for you and that you have set for the meeting.
- For instance, if you really like the look of a certain template, but its header section is so long that it's distracting, feel free to delete superfluous sections of the header as you see fit, as long as you do so in a way that doesn't ruin the formatting of the document or render the agenda ugly.

Best Practices for Using an Agenda

Schedule the most important topics first. When planning meetings, it's usually a good policy to front-load the schedule with the most important topics. This ensures two important things. First, it ensures that everyone will be able to discuss these important topics when they're at their sharpest and least-fatigued at the very beginning of the meeting. Second, it ensures that in the event that the meeting has to end early or certain attendees need to leave before it finishes, important topics have already been discussed.
- Meetings don't always go the way you plan them to. If minor, unimportant topics get cut from the end of a meeting, it may be possible to resolve them on your own or to schedule another meeting for later. However, if you're unable to get to the biggest topics of discussion, your meeting has failed to achieve part of its purpose, which can be both frustrating and embarrassing for you. Keeping the most important topics at the top of your schedule usually avoids this problem.

Stick to your agenda's schedule, but be flexible. When planning and conducting a meeting, one of the biggest dangers you'll want to look out for is the meeting going over its allotted time. Generally, employees hate overly-long meetings, and with good reason, as they can be tremendously boring and can prevent people from doing actual work instead. To ensure your meeting stays on schedule, you'll want to keep an eye on the clock and, when you get the opportunity, politely move the meeting forward by saying something like, "we should move to the next topic if we want to get out of here on time."
- However, meetings often don't go as planned, so you'll need to be prepared to compensate if one part of your meeting runs longer than you would have liked. Be flexible while trying to cover as much ground as possible in the limited time you have for your meeting. For instance, if one part of your meeting runs long, you may need to shorten the discussion for other parts of your meeting or eliminate relatively unimportant parts of the meeting entirely to assure a timely conclusion.

Start writing your agenda well in advance of the meeting. Though agendas aren't necessarily as important as other types of business documents (like reports, data spreadsheets, presentation slides, etc.), you'll still want your agenda to be as professional and polished as possible, especially if you plan on sharing it with your coworkers at the meeting. To ensure you have enough time to produce a quality document, start writing your agenda as early as you reasonably can.
- Starting early also gives you the benefit of being able to receive feedback on your agenda before the meeting. Sharing a draft of your agenda with coworkers or supervisors and asking for their input can help you fix flaws and add missing details that weren't present initially. If you wait until the last second to write your agenda, you may not have time to solicit this feedback.
- While you may be able to get away with writing agendas for ordinary, everyday meetings the day before the meeting itself, important meetings may require weeks of preparation.

Share the agenda with the attendees before the meeting. To ensure that everyone arrives at the meeting with full knowledge of the topic to be discussed, you'll want to share the agenda with everyone beforehand. Depending on the company culture where you work, this may mean printing off numerous copies and delivering them in person, or simply emailing the agenda as an attachment. However you choose to distribute your agenda, be sure that it is free from technical errors before sending.
- Depending on the importance of the meeting, you'll probably want to give attendees the agenda at least an hour or two before the meeting. For big, important meetings, sending the agenda a day or more in advance may be necessary.
- Since people are often busy and forgetful, it's a smart idea to take several additional copies of the agenda with you to the meeting in case anyone forgets theirs.

Sample Agendas

Sample Business Meeting Agenda

Sample Club Meeting Agenda

Sample PTA Meeting Agenda

Tips

An excellent tool for having a productive meeting is using "OARR": Objectives, Agenda, Roles & Responsibilities. First, your meeting should have an objective. If you are having a meeting to just impart information, don't waste people's time with a meeting. Send them a newsletter. The objective should have an active component and if possible, a product to show for it: "Determine the quarterly goals for the team". The agenda is a list of the topics you'll address to get to that objective, with a time limit to keep you on track. For example "1. Review the status of last quarter's goals (15 minutes), 2. Round-table suggestions for goals (20 minutes), 3. Pick top 5 goals (10 minutes), etc.) For Roles and Responsibilities, determine who is running the meeting, who is keeping notes, and who will assign actions/"to do" items resulting from the meeting.

Depending what your colleagues prefer, it might be worth keeping to a deadline for people suggesting ideas to add to the agenda. Name a cut-off date and time, and stick to it. Allow for amendments where these enhance the agenda or are simply a case of events overriding your original agenda.

If somebody cannot make the meeting, consider creating an "Advance Apologies" section at the top of the agenda, or leave a space for this and simply announce them during the meeting.