Making a plan before meeting

The better plan is, the more effective meeting is. Before a meeting, we need to ask ourselves 3”W”: Why, Who, When.

Why

Meeting organizer should be clear about the meeting purpose and ensure meeting is the most effective channel for this purpose.

When you hold a meeting without clear topics, the meeting participators will feel confused and time-waste. A meeting holder invited many functions to attend ad-hoc meeting for urgent case. He just wanted to find out solution or action owner from these participators. But he didn’t know what the root cause was and who the key person to resolve it was.  So he was blocked when others inquired what they needed to do.  

At the same time, many people over use meeting as a method of problem resolving or a channel of communication. That is the reason that managers are busy in meetings and faced meeting schedule conflicts.  After you have a clear purpose and goal for a meeting, you still need check whether there is any more effective channel than meeting, such as telephone, email, or separately discussion with different functions, especially when you cannot get the alignment with all participators’ schedule.
Who

Meeting participator is a key element of meeting.  Wrong invitation will cause time consuming and credit loss. When people are invited wrongly, they may think this meeting holder is not serious and will ignore next invitation sometimes.  At the same time, they may challenge the holder in the meeting and waste others’ time. On the other hand, the level of participator should be thought about which depends on the meeting requirement. Sometimes we need persons who can make decision but sometimes we just need an expert to give valuable input. Do not invite high level manager to attend routing discussion or invite low level staff to attend decision making section. Otherwise, goal of meeting is hard to achieve.

When

A proper agenda makes half of success of meeting.  Meeting holder should focus on his topics to draft an agenda. After that, the schedule of meeting should be aligned with participators especially those key persons.  Pay more attention – do not arrange a meeting on Friday if you could. Because most of people are making the weekend plan and may not concentrate on meeting and there is high risk that some key persons will be absent.  If you arrange a staff meeting near lunch time, a working meal will motivate staffs and shows your appreciation of their time. The most important thing is to send the agenda before meeting which helps participates to make preparations.

A good arrangement will lead success of meeting!