Holding Meetings that Matter: Planning
I think I speak for most when I say pointless meetings are the worst. I believe every meeting can and should be held with some level of purpose. It may simply be an opportunity to connect or it may be aimed at addressing a complex social or environmental issue with a large group of stakeholders, also sometimes called “interest-holders.” Supporting this type of meeting requires a careful, thoughtful approach to planning, involving the participants, and facilitating the meetings themselves. Over a series of three blog posts, I’ll share best practices from my work facilitating this type of engagement process – beginning with one of the most important and often underestimated steps: planning.
Meeting Planning – Do Not Skimp on This Essential Step
Upfront planning is key to pulling off a successful meeting and shows participants you value their time.
If there’s one thing you take away from this post, it’s do not wing it! Set a specific goal or desired outcome for each meeting and carefully craft the meeting agenda to achieve it.
Planning should be done in collaboration with your meeting ‘sponsor’ or key client (whether internal or external to your organization).
Yes, you are ultimately responsible for the outcome of the meeting, preparing materials and bringing ideas to the table for the agenda and activities, but you need buy-in from the meeting sponsor. This ensures the right people are in the room, potential issues or detours that could come up are flagged ahead of time, and makes your meeting as productive and well-managed as possible.
Plan a recruitment step into your timeline and budget if outside organizations are vital to your meeting or process.
Again, work with your meeting sponsor to create a list of relevant organizations and contacts. Ideally, the person closest to the contact, often the meeting sponsor or someone within their team or organization, does the initial outreach to catch the person’s attention. From there, you as the facilitator or people supporting you can follow up to confirm the person’s participation and send out meeting information. This will likely take a minimum of two weeks, but up to four weeks is common. 
Determine the logistics for how your meeting is best conducted – in person or virtual, group activities, rules of conduct and decision-making, etc.
In our post-pandemic world, virtual meetings have become the go-to for cost, convenience and higher attendance, especially when people are geographically spread out or working across many different organizations. When your group is large, remember that smaller breakout groups are your friend for ensuring participants are engaged in the process and their perspectives and input are heard.
If you are asking your group to agree on something (like a problem, purpose or vision statement), always start with a draft to give people something to react to and revise together vs. an intimidating empty screen to fill in by committee.
Along the same lines, include draft “rules of engagement” at the start of your meeting for the group to review and approve to set clear expectations for how people are to conduct themselves and to keep discussions respectful and appropriate. With your meeting sponsor, you also need to determine how decisions will be made (e.g. voting vs. discussion with one ultimate decision-maker).
Coming Up Next
Hopefully these tips highlight why planning is so crucial and equip you with some tools to hold more effective meetings. In Part 2 of this blog series, we’ll tackle what to do just before, during and after the meeting itself to make it as successful as possible.
