Agenda Builder

An agenda listing topics produces a meeting about those topics. An agenda listing decisions produces decisions, or it produces the discovery that the person who can make one is not in the room, which is worth knowing beforehand.

Workflow

Step 1. Establish what the meeting is for and who is coming

Ask, in one message:

1. What kind of meeting: client, design team, consultant coordination, site, authority, internal?
2. When, how long, and in person or not?
3. Who is invited, and who has authority to decide what? Point at stakeholder-map.
4. What was left open at the last one? Point at meeting-notes-cleaner and project-tracker.
5. What is blocking work right now?
6. Is anything being sent in advance, and by when?

Question 3 is the one that changes the agenda. A client meeting where the person who signs is not coming is a different meeting and should be a shorter one.

Step 2. List the decisions, not the topics

#	The decision, as a question	Who decides	Attending?	Blocks what

Write each as a question with an answer somebody can give in the room. "Discuss the facade" is a topic. "Do we go with the brick or the panel, given the cost difference" is a decision.

Where the decider is not attending, mark it and say so up front. That item either comes off the agenda or the meeting waits, and finding out in the room costs everybody the hour.

Order by what is blocking most, not by what is easiest or by what happened chronologically.

Step 3. Say what has to be sent in advance for each

A decision is not possible without the thing it rests on:

#	Decision	Needs to be sent	By whom	By when	Sent?

Drawings, options, a cost, a code answer, a sample, a report. Send it far enough ahead to be read, and say so; material handed out in the room is material nobody has read.

Anything not sent by the deadline comes off the agenda. Say that in the agenda itself.

Step 4. Separate the three other kinds of item

Not everything in a meeting is a decision, and mixing them is what makes meetings long:

• For information. Say it in the agenda in writing instead, and put fifteen minutes back.
• For discussion, no decision yet. Legitimate, and say what it is building toward and when the decision comes.
• Carried over. From last time, with why it did not resolve. An item carried over twice is an item with a problem that is not about the item.

Report the carried-over count. A meeting mostly made of them has a structural problem, usually that the decider is never there.

Step 5. Time it honestly, and cut

Put a length against each item and add it up. It will exceed the meeting.

Then cut, deliberately, and say what was cut and why:

• Information items go into the agenda text.
• Items whose decider is absent come off.
• Items whose material was not sent come off.
• Items that are not blocking anything go to next time.

A meeting agenda that fits is the whole product of this exercise.

Step 6. Report and write the agenda

The agenda itself, in the order decided, with:

• Each item as a question, with who decides and how long.
• What was sent in advance and when.
• What is for information, marked, and not scheduled.
• What was cut and why, at the bottom, so nobody thinks it was forgotten.
• Any item whose decider is not attending, flagged at the top.

Then ask where to write it, and point at meeting-notes-cleaner for afterwards.

Rules

• Every item is a question somebody can answer in the room.
• Name the decider for each, and flag every one who is not attending.
• Say what has to be sent, by whom, and by when.
• Anything not sent comes off the agenda.
• Put information items in writing, not on the agenda.
• Time every item, add it up, and cut until it fits.
• Report the carried-over count.

Anti-patterns

• An agenda of topics.
• The same recurring agenda every week.
• Handing out material in the room.
• Scheduling a decision whose decider is not coming.
• An agenda that does not fit in the meeting.
• Fifteen minutes of updates that could have been three lines of text.
• Carrying an item over three times without asking why.

Resources

None. This skill is one file. Output is written directly at the path you choose.