How to organize a meeting
The ability to organize and deliver effective meetings is a vital part of any business. Nobody wants to attend a meeting that could have been an email. Nobody wants to attend an in-person full team meeting in which only three people can participate. (Even if there are refreshments provided.)
Every meeting should have a purpose and result in outcomes that move a project or the business forward.
This guide on how to organize a meeting is a decade of experience in organizing and running different types of meetings condensed into useful tips you can adopt when planning your next meeting.
Organizing a meeting starts with one question: Does there need to be a meeting?
You’ll be surprised at how many folks leap straight to “we need a meeting” before thinking things through.
Define the objectives of the meeting
When you’re deciding if a meeting needs to take place, consider your objectives. What is the goal? What needs to be achieved?
A meeting will usually take place for two or more of the following reasons;
making decisions.
delegating multiple actions or tasks.
specific questions need to be asked and answered.
business-related changes.
updates that need to be shared with multiple people.
There are caveats to each of these reasons.
For example, I won’t arrange a project meeting if I just need to ask one person a question about the project and delegate project tasks to a different person. Those are calls or emails, not meetings.
So, how do you decide if you need to write an email or arrange a meeting?
An email or a meeting: examples
Knowing whether there should be an email or a meeting comes down to which option best serves the specifics of the following three factors;
informed decision making
tactical time management, and
practical problem solving
The following two examples show how these factors are considered when deciding to arrange a meeting or send an email.
Example: An email not a meeting
Deciding on a potential contractor to provide a service might sound like it requires a full meeting with them right away. But, at this point, there are only two questions to ask: Is the contractor interested in this project? Is the contractor able to take on this project?
Informed decision making - Provide enough information about the project, including the budget and timeline. The format that makes the most sense here is a written document. On a call or even in a meeting, details can be missed or misinterpreted.
Tactical time management - When all you need is a yes or a no, one email draft sent to multiple potential contractors takes less time than organizing, arranging, and carrying out multiple meetings.
Practical problem solving - Those who respond with a maybe or a yes have shown they are interested, know the requirements, and will already have questions about moving forward with the project. They may also have ideas to share about how they can make the project a success.
Once you’ve received the responses by your set deadline (always set a deadline), you can then move forward with the process. That next step might involve a meeting.
Example: A meeting not an email
A Director with a busy diary and a busier inbox has to make decisions quickly about priorities on their time. In a fast-paced environment, priorities can change quickly and delegation is a daily occurrence. With so many things to consider, a regular one-to-one meeting between the Director and their Personal Assistant makes sense.
Informed decision making - Making time to look at all the competing demands on the Director's time will help inform decisions on which meetings to keep, delegate or rearrange. Moving one thing can impact other items and having that live interaction allows for a more immediate response.
Tactical time management - One meeting to cover various diary issues is quicker than multiple back-and-forths by email on different meetings or tasks, especially when the Director will often be in other meetings and too busy to respond.
Practical problem solving - Specific questions need to be asked and answered. The “how” of solving meeting clashes will then fall to the fully informed Personal Assistant.
Later, an email or chat message asking for clarification on one meeting or one task would be more sensible than organizing another meeting.
Top Tip: A meeting should always be held when sharing any news that impacts the workforce or an individual.
What a meeting with purpose looks like
Every meeting should have a purpose. Once you know the purpose of the meeting, set an objective for the meeting with goals that will achieve that purpose.
An example of a meeting with purpose
A new project has been allocated to the team. All the team will be involved, but what they’ll do and when they’ll do it hasn’t been decided yet. This means it’s time for a team meeting.
Meeting objective: to discuss the project, split the project into tasks, and allocate the project tasks to team members.
Goal: All project tasks are defined and allocated.
Knowing the meeting goals will help inform the rest of the decisions you need to make about the meeting.
Choose the right people to invite
Once the goals are known, it’s time to decide which people will help achieve those goals.
Deciding who to invite to the meeting will depend on their ability to make decisions in the meeting and take action after the meeting.
Top Tip: Not everybody invited to the meeting with be a decision maker or action taker. Consider who needs to be involved in the long-term and if they should be invited to this meeting.
Allocating roles and responsibilities
Before any meeting takes place, it needs to be planned. Deciding what skills will be required for the meeting is key. From presentations to organizing refreshments, every element needs to be planned ahead and assigned in advance.
Make sure that there is enough time before the meeting for any reports, presentations, or other information to be prepared.
Roles and responsibilities: Presenting a presentation
If the meeting requires a presentation, what type of presentation will it be? Who will be responsible for creating it? Who will present the information?
The length of the presentation needs to be agreed upon before it’s assigned so it doesn’t go over the time allocated on the meeting agenda.
Top Tip: If the presentation requires the use of other electronic devices, find out whose responsibility it is to set up the equipment in the location and keep them informed of the meeting date and time.
Roles and responsibilities: Notes from the Notetaker
Every meeting should have a notetaker. This is an individual who will take detailed minutes of the meeting, such as what was discussed and who said what. If detailed minutes aren’t required, the notetaker can record the basics of what decisions were made, what questions were asked/answered, what tasks were delegated, and to whom.
Some businesses already have a designated notetaker in the form of a Personal Assistant. Choosing an Assistant who is connected to the meeting Chair, one of the attendees, or an Assistant who is based at the meeting location would be both practical and convenient.
Programs or devices can be used to record a meeting, but there are mixed results. You would also need to have every attendee agree in advance to be recorded, as the recording will pick up everything. The other problem with recording devices is that it isn’t always possible to recognize who is speaking, and devices can break or not work properly.
Having a human in the meeting to note the main bullet points and actions is a practical solution. They need to be reliable, trusted to keep information confidential, and able to have the notes ready to share within a short amount of time.
Top Tip: Avoid stepping on toes by respecting the chain of command. Make sure to get permission from the potential Notetaker's direct manager before asking the Notetaker if they can attend the meeting.
Location. Location. Location.
If a meeting needs to be all day, arranging an in-person meeting in the most geographically ideal location could make sense. There are factors to consider, such as travel costs (transportation, meals, accommodation), accessibility, and impact on work/life balance.
If the attendees are widely dispersed, there are budget restraints, or it’s not practical to meet in person, an all-day virtual meeting is a viable alternative.
Top Tip: If most attendees are already based in the same location on the same days, arrange to have that meeting in person.
Send a meeting invitation
How to invite meeting attendees will vary depending on how your business is organized. Many organizations and businesses are fully digital and will utilize their digital calendars to arrange meetings.
Most digital calendars allow for basic information such as attendees, date, time, location, and a message to be shared in an event invitation.
Date, Time and Location details
Share details about when and where the meeting will take place.
Some attendees may be traveling from other locations and need to plan ahead to book travel and rearrange other appointments.
If it’s a face-to-face meeting, share the name of the meeting room, the floor and the name of the office/meeting location.
If the location hasn’t been used for a meeting before or some of the attendees are new to the business, sharing a map to the location from the nearest train station would be helpful.
If it’s a virtual meeting, share a link to the virtual meeting space inside the meeting invitation.
Top Tip: Share instructions on how to access the virtual meeting space. Although many attendees may have previous experience with virtual meetings, it’s always best practice to share a ‘how to’.
The meeting title and purpose of the meeting
Use a clear name for the meeting so people can quickly reference it when discussing the meeting and easily find it in their calendar.
Letting attendees know the purpose of the meeting will enable them to make decisions regarding their priorities.
Use the “message” or “description” space in the event invitation to add more information.
If it isn’t confidential or restricted information, mention the goals and objectives of the meeting in brief.
If these can’t be shared in a calendar invite because there are too many goals or because of the sensitive nature of the information, you can skip adding this to the meeting invite. This will need to be included in the full Agenda.
Agenda items
If this is a typical meeting with the same format, share the Agenda bullet points or an overview so attendees can see, at a glance, what they will need to prepare for.
If this is a new or long meeting, you can skip sharing the agenda on the meeting invitation.
Alternate attendees
If the meeting allows for it, let attendees know they can send their informed and empowered deputy to this meeting in their stead.
An informed and empowered deputy will act on behalf of the original attendee and can make decisions in the meeting on their behalf. Some meetings may require a representative of the original attendees team, but most meetings involve agreeing on actions to take. For these meetings, a true deputy needs to be empowered to take action.
This should only be in situations where the attendee has already planned leave or might have a meeting clash with something they can’t reschedule.
The option of sending a deputy should only be offered where the attendee doesn’t need to make a decision at the meeting or their deputy is fully empowered to make decisions on their behalf. It should not be misused to get out of meetings.
Top Tip: Ask attendees to send the name and email address of their deputy to the meeting organizer so that the original invitation can be sent. Forwarded meeting invites won’t always notify the meeting organizer of changes. Also, if a meeting invitation is altered or the meeting is cancelled, these changes won’t always filter through to forwarded meeting invitations.
Include a reminder notification
Set the digital meeting invitation to send a reminder notification ten or fifteen minutes before the meeting is due to start. This will help attendees by giving them a few minutes to prepare for the meeting on the day of the meeting.
Create an Agenda
Every meeting should have an Agenda. From a detailed plan across a series of days to a couple of bullet points highlighting the main items, an Agenda helps manage time and expectations.
Goals and objectives
Include the meeting goals and objectives at the beginning of an Agenda. If it is a long meeting where each item has a specific goal and objective, include those details at the beginning of each item. This will help attendees and the Chair maintain focus.
Timings for items
Each item needs to be given enough time to be delivered, discussed or presented. The length of time each item is given should have been agreed in advance, especially where there is a presentation or someone is attending only part of the meeting.
Welcome, introduction and housekeeping
The first item should be led by the Chair or meeting lead. This includes a welcome to attendees, and introduction, usually highlighting the reason for the meeting, and housekeeping. The type of meeting and the location will decide the details of the housekeeping. For an in-person team meeting, it is important to inform attendees of the location of the facilities and what to do in case of a fire alarm or fire drill.
Breaks
Every meeting over one hour needs to include breaks. This is generally to allow attendees to use the facilities but it should be used to let people move around, get a drink or eat.
A break should not be optional. For every hour, there should be a ten-minute break. For every three-hour block, there should be a thirty-minute break, which is usually used for a meal. This can be extended to an hour-long break if food is not being provided at the meeting location, as enough time should be given to attendees to purchase food locally.
Top Tip: Even if people choose not to leave the room, this time can be used to process what they have learned and prepare for the next section of the meeting.
Overview of the actions
What items are included in the meeting depend on the nature of the meeting. As there will be actions delegated or allocated during the meeting, there should be a few minutes to review the actionable items.
This time will be used to confirm the action, agree on who the action will be allocated to or who will be responsible for moving it forward, and a deadline. This is why it pays to have an official notetaker in your meeting.
Top Tip: This is the best time to remind attendees of the Action Log tracking process. Include how they update their actions and name the person who is responsible for tracking updates on the Action Log. This can be the meeting Chair, a designated Personal Assistant, or someone else with access to the required information.
Save a digital copy of the Agenda
Once the Agenda has been approved by the meeting chair, a digital copy needs to be saved. The location of the file should be accessible by all attendees. If there is a reason why not all attendees can have access to the location of the Agenda, a copy of the Agenda will need to be shared by email.
Share the Agenda with attendees
Enabling all attendees to be fully informed of what the meeting will include will help them to prepare and plan ahead.
Best practice for sharing an Agenda is to share the document (either as an attachment or a link to the saved location) will attendees via email. Include the meeting date and title in the email subject heading so it will be easy to find. The body of the message can provide more information if required.
After the meeting
Once the meeting is over, there is still work to be done.
Before they leave the room, agree with the notetaker on when the meeting notes and actions need to be ready.
Arrange for the meeting notes and actions to be sent to the Chair for sign-off before the meeting notes are shared more widely.
Writing the meeting notes and action log
The meeting notes might include questions that were asked but not answered in the meeting. This is an opportunity to answer those questions and add them to the meeting notes.
If the questions will take a while after the meeting to fully answer, these can be turned into action points and allocated accordingly.
Action Log design
The best practice for monitoring actions that have been agreed upon in meetings is by creating an action log. Often this takes the form of a spreadsheet with a column for;
Action Log Number (for easy tracking)
Date of the meeting
Item on the Agenda
The action detail
Name of the lead person responsible for the action
Deadline
Update
Open/Closed
The update column is where the lead on the action can provide information about how the action is progressing or how it has been completed.
Once the action has been completed and signed off, the action can move from “Open” to “Closed”.
The Action Log will need to be assigned to someone involved in the meetings. This could be the meeting Chair, a Personal Assistant or somebody else who is involved with the meeting. They will monitor progress, share any updates with the relevant people, track upcoming deadlines, and send timely reminders to those assigned actions.
Share the meeting notes and action logs
When sharing the meeting notes and actions with attendees, ensure that in-house policies on restricted information are followed.
The document for the meeting notes should be saved as read-only. There needs to be one truth about the meeting, without the possibility that the notes or actions can be altered, even by accident.
Usually, meeting attendees are informed of the meeting notes and the action logs through email.
Make sure that the email is easily recognized as being about the meeting by adding the meeting date and name to the email subject. Any links shared need to be accessible by all attendees.
Top Tip: It is best practice to remind those with actions when sharing the meeting notes. This can simply be a list of names with action numbers within the body of any email message sent out to attendees.
How to organize a successful meeting TL;DR
There’s a lot to consider when organizing a meeting, especially when we want to ensure a successful meeting. The details shared explain why these actions are important. If you’re already a pro with organizing meetings or trust that this guide will be helpful, and you know there really needs to be a meeting rather than an email, here’s a brief overview of how to organize a meeting.
Define the objectives of the meeting
Choose the right people to invite
Allocate roles and responsibilities
Location. Location. Location.
Send a meeting invitation
Create an Agenda
Share the meeting notes and action log
Following this guide will help make sure your next meeting is both effective and successful.