Sample Meeting Agenda (with Explanatory Notes)

Work meetings can be notoriously big time-wasters. So we create agendas to help keep our meetings from going off into all kinds of directions. And from never getting to the original point. But they aren’t always well-thought through. So I put together a basic sample meeting agenda to help you keep your business meetings on track.

Not that agendas can do all the heavy lifting. But a really good agenda (with some added guideposts) can make all the difference. It can help the person running the meeting keep people on topic. And provides everyone with a roadmap for where the meeting needs to go. It can also help you realize when you actually get there!

Basic Sample Meeting Agenda

First, a radical idea:  An agenda that tells you what topics the meeting will cover. And helps people truly understand why they are there!

Most agendas provide a quick list of topics that will be discussed, with little more than that. But sometimes people who attend the meeting aren’t quite sure exactly why they are there. They just see a bunch of points on an agenda that may or may not be connected to some overall goal.

So the radical idea is to use the agenda to help people know why they are in the room at this time. And also help them understand what you plan to accomplish during the meeting — the bigger picture.

When people fully understand your purpose, their contributions throughout can be more on point, and therefore more effective. A simple concept that too many meeting makers fail to consider.

Now the sample meeting agenda:

[Click on sample meeting agenda below to see it in new window]

NOTE:  You may notice that some of the items seem like they may be covering the same territory. While that might appear to be a poor use of time, the meeting goal is to uncover any potential problems / showstoppers.

So leaving room for a little extra digging and thought — and coming at it from a slightly different angle —  is exactly on target. And it may save you big problems later on.

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