How to Organize an Effective Meeting
To accomplish valuable work during a meeting, the meeting should follow three basic phases of organizing. These phases include: open meeting, work to accomplish the primary meeting purpose, and close the meeting. Utilizing an agenda and following the meeting phases will make the accomplishment of work during the meeting more productive and will increase the value of the time spent in the meeting.
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Instructions
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You start the meeting with an OPEN phase where you should take a few minutes to review and get agreement to the meeting purpose and agenda. This lets everyone know and understand the key objective for the meeting and the time allotments for their needed actions to accomplish the meeting objective. If you want the meeting to stay on track, make sure the agenda is visible throughout the meeting to everyone.
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Then you and your meeting members will begin to work on the PRIMARY reasons you are together at this time. This is when the actual work is done during the meeting. On you agenda, this work will be indicated by the items listed with most important item to accomplish first so you are sure it gets done. If the important item requires some data review or discussion first, then each step in that item review process will be listed with the estimated time needed to accomplish it. If decisions are to be made after a presentation or discussion, the type of decision making method needs to be established as well. Since the agenda is still visible to the group, use it to check off action items as they are completed in the meeting. This will keep the group motivated to continue working on the meeting purpose agreed to during the open phase. It will also keep you from having to stop to catch up people who are late or had to step out for a portion of the meeting.
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Finally, when you CLOSE the meeting, you will need to take a few minutes to review what was accomplished, assign outside action items, and possibly have the meeting members do a meeting evaluation. If another follow-up meeting is to be planned, create a tentative agenda for it and try to set a potential date for that meeting before everyone leaves.
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Tips & Warnings
The 3 phases are adapted from the Agenda chapter of the book "R.A!R.A! A Meeting Wizard's Approach" by Shirley Fine Lee, copyright 2007. RARA is an acronym for the four key components of productive and effective meetings: Roles, Agenda, Records, and Actions.
See the article titled for "How to Create a Meeting Agenda That Works" to better prepare for opening your meetings. See the article titled "How to Assign Meeting Action Items That Get Done" to better prepare for closing your meetings.
