 We've all been in meetings that wasted our time and didn't seem to achieve anything. The average person attends 10 meetings or more per week and spends 31 hours in unproductive meetings per month. Save time for you and your team by taking these seven actions when writing any meeting agenda. Learn how to set a meeting agenda to make your meetings effective and useful for all attendees. And towards the end of the video I go through a set of questions to ask your attendees to help you further improve your meeting agendas. My name is Jess Coles and I've spent 25 years working in corporates and household names through to SMEs at all management levels. I've attended countless meetings, run meetings from one-to-ones to anti-meetings through to board meetings. Getting a clear, specific agenda with the right attendees transforms boring, lifeless meetings into useful, interactive working sessions. If you're new to this channel, Enhance.training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. So let's start with the first action to do when thinking about how to set a meeting agenda and that is be clear on the goals for the meeting. We all know that meetings can be a black hole for your time. Be clear about why you're having the meeting and why you're inviting each attendee. Is the meeting your planning to firstly provide information, secondly to discuss specific challenges and come up with solutions, or third to take specific decisions or actions? Or is it all three? I suggest that you try to ensure that the meetings are working sessions that foster plenty of discussion, problem solving and decision making rather than presenting information that you could have sent around an email. Another useful consideration is to break the areas of discussion or decision into three separate groups. Firstly, operational challenges. Those items that need to be dealt with on a day to day or week to week basis. Secondly, tactical challenges. Those challenges likely to affect the business within the next three to six months. And thirdly, strategic challenges. Those challenges affecting the business in at least six months or more. I've been to too many meetings where the agenda is a mix of all three and it is much harder to get sensible output and keep the meeting on track. Try to separate these groups as much as you can within the meetings or into separate meetings. A second action when writing a meeting agenda is to make each agenda item specific. Don't put vague items on the agenda. Make them specific. This helps the attendees to understand what is expected of them in the meeting and to start mentally preparing before the meeting. Pose each meeting agenda item as a specific question. An example could be, how do we increase the click-through rate of our Facebook advertising campaign CD02 by 1% or more? Keep the length of your agenda to a small number, say five or less, of specific topics if you want your meeting to be a problem-solving working session. It is unlikely that attendees will be able to concentrate fully through a marathon of topics. Another problem with many agenda items is that each one is rushed and is not covered properly. The third action when writing a meeting agenda is to match the attendees to the topics of the meeting. If a person is not affected by the topics on your agenda, don't invite them. They can spend their time more productively elsewhere. Keep the number of attendees as small as possible. Below 10 is recommended and five or below is even better. You'll have more discussion and action from a smaller group. The larger the group, the more likely the meeting will become an information sharing exercise and the less likely everyone will participate. Specify clearly who will be responsible for owning and facilitating each item on the agenda. You want to avoid one person talking through most of the meeting to encourage more participation. The fourth action when setting a meeting agenda is to allocate enough time for each agenda item. Experts suggest the optimum meeting length to keep everyone focused is around 45 minutes. The type of meeting that you're having will impact on the length of the meeting. Here are several common types of meetings with typical meeting lengths. Plan accordingly. If you have a preset amount of time for the meeting, then give each agenda item the time it needs to get to the goal you're looking for, whether it's information sharing, a discussion, or a decision. Don't try to cram in as many items as possible. Book another meeting or extend the meeting if you can. If you can set the length of the meeting, then make sure you have enough time to get to the planned output for each item on the agenda. The fifth action when setting a meeting agenda is to organise a person to take notes or minutes of the meeting. One person taking the key notes and then sending it round after the meeting saves all the attendees taking notes throughout the meeting. It is pretty hard to take notes and be fully participating in the meeting at the same time. So the more people fully participating, the better the meeting should be. The notes of the meeting can also be shared with those not invited to attend, which provides them with valuable information and reinforces an open working culture. For larger, more formal meetings, invite a non-participant into the meeting specifically to take notes. This ensures that all the other attendees can participate fully. And the notes should capture, as a minimum, firstly the actions to be done after the meeting, second who will do each action, and third what timeframe they have to do the action. The sixth action when setting a meeting agenda is to decide what pre-reads to send out prior to the meeting. What information needs to be shared prior to the meeting so everyone can focus on discussion and decision rather than education. This will reduce the meeting length and make the meeting more valuable to those that attend. Ask those leading each agenda item to provide information for each participant in advance of the meeting, so the group doesn't have to review key information during the meeting. Obviously the more complex or the higher volume of information shared, the more time between sharing the information and the meeting itself will be needed so people can review it properly. As a minimum, we suggest pre-reads are sent around 48 hours before the meeting. The seventh action when setting a meeting agenda is to actually end the meeting with a quick review. Some questions to ask the attendees could include, firstly, was the agenda sent out with enough time to allow all attendees to properly prepare? Second, how well did the attendees prepare before the meeting? Thirdly, did the meetings stay on track in terms of both topics and time? Fourth, did the meeting fulfil its purpose, your information sharing, discussion and decisions made? And fifth, are the actions from the meeting clear and realistic? And sixth, how effective was the meeting or you could rate the meeting's effectiveness from one to ten, say? And then lastly, send out the agenda to the attendees and ask for feedback. This important step leads to better meeting agendas and the attendees are better prepared prior to the meeting. Ask the planned attendees, firstly, has anything important been missed from the agenda? Second, are all the agenda items clear and specific enough? Thirdly, is the right person looking after each agenda item? And fourth, is each person leading each agenda item fully prepared? And of course, ask any other relevant questions of the group of attendees that you need to. So in summary, how to set a meeting agenda can be learned and improved quickly to make your meetings useful and valuable to all attendees, as well as your team and the business. Take the time to set your meeting agenda and make your meetings engaging. Attendees will be able to contribute more and use the time much more effectively. And if you have any thoughts or suggestions of what works well for you, please leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you. And as always, if you like this video, please hit the thumbs up button and subscribe. Thanks for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.