Blogs, News & Updates

Effective board meeting  #2 The agenda

by Silvan van Hierden on Wednesday 6 May 2020

You want to use your meeting time as effectively as possible. Drawing up a good board meeting agenda will help you achieve this. In this blog we explain why this is the case and what a good board meeting agenda should fulfill for an effective board meeting. 

Effective board meetings? Make sure you have a proper meeting agenda

A clear agenda is always important if you want to meet efficiently. This is even more important for a remote meeting. Because you miss a large part of the non-verbal communication during an online meeting, it is doubly important that you are completely clear in all your other forms of communication. For example in the meeting agenda.

How does the board meeting agenda contribute to an effective board meeting?

With a good meeting agenda you reach a number of goals:

  • Meeting participants can prepare themselves. This ensures a more substantive and also smoother meeting.

  • Insight into the purpose of the meeting increases the motivation of the meeting participants. After all, they know what they will spend their time on.

  • It gives a better grip on the meeting: what is not on the agenda is not discussed (at that moment).

  • It provides an overview during the meeting: you can clearly see what point you are at, what is yet to be discussed and whether you are running late.

In Indeqa the agenda is the foundation of your minutes. This way, a carefully drawn up agenda saves time afterwards.

Which parts contains a good meeting agenda?

1. Who, what, where, when? 

Always put the general information such as date, time, location or meeting link (the answer to 'where?' at an online meeting) and the scheduled attendees at the top. Because this is at the top, everyone can easily find this information.

At a meeting with Indeqa you can enter things like date, time and attendees in advance, so everyone can automatically find it at the right place in the meeting agenda.

2. Why? The purpose of the meeting

The purpose of the meeting is sometimes skipped. Nevertheless, it is useful to pay attention to this. If the purpose is clear, everyone knows why a meeting is being held. This increases the motivation and involvement of the participants. Meeting participants also know better what they can expect from the meeting, so that everyone can prepare themselves better. Another advantage is that you can decide with each other afterwards whether the goal of the meeting has been achieved. This keeps all participants on their toes and ensures a pleasant conclusion: 'we dit it!
 

3. Notices

Because all those involved are together, an online meeting is a convenient time for announcements. Do you doubt if there will be any questions following an announcement, or if there will be a discussion? If so, please put it on the meeting as a meeting point. You prefer to keep the meeting item 'announcements' short and concise.

4. Content-related items, topics

Make sure the topics are in line with the purpose of the meeting. If this is not the case, you must either adjust the purpose or the items of the meeting. For each meeting item, briefly describe what it is about and refer to any appendices. You should also note here who any speakers are. In order to monitor the time, you can write down how much time has been scheduled for each item.

5. Whatever else comes up for discussion, ask around

The most important point of attention for the circular question is that it is only suitable for short questions and certainly not for points of discussion. A chairperson has an important role to play at the moment and can prevent this meeting point from ending, but you can also do a number of things in advance to support the chairperson in this. For example, by briefly including the 'rules of the game' in the agenda. Prior to the meeting, you can also write down who has questions for the roundtable, so that you can schedule them. Of course it is also possible to hold a meeting without a question. For many meetings this turns out to be an excellent decision that improves the effectiveness of the meeting.
 

6. Closing the meeting

At this point you often see that meeting participants are often tired and restless. This can be partly overcome by the description of this item in the agenda. For example, would a chairman like to briefly summarize the meeting? Do you want to look back to see whether the goal has been achieved? Or look ahead to the next meeting? If so, put this in keywords under the closure, so that the meeting participants know what to expect. This makes it easier for meeting participants to keep their attention focused at this meeting point as well.
 

Effective board meetings? Share the meeting agenda on time

For an effective meeting, it is important that meeting participants can view the agenda well in advance of the meeting. So share it in time, so that everyone can read it and prepare otherwise. As a meeting organizer you can make changes in Indeqa at a later time, or add documents to the meeting agenda. So you don't have to wait until the last moment and you can provide everyone with information on time.

Would you like to organize board meetings based on Teams and Indeqa? watch our demo videos or apply for our free 30 day trial.

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Topics: Effective board meetings

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