Have you ever attended a meeting where the Chair kept on talking and talking until the team members switched off on him? if you called to meet people, why not give them the opportunity to meet.
There are four main reasons why meetings may be called. You are free to add another reason you may know.
- Informational – to inform a team about something – or departmental updates.
- News updates for handling a crisis or urgent issues
- Decision meetings – to decide on a critical issue or strategy
- Other – to answer specific questions
Effective meetings have short agendas as they focus on one issue at a time. For board meetings where members meet quarterly, an Agenda may cover all the above four reasons. To be effective, members must receive the required documents in time at least two weeks before the meetings, which exception of item number 2, since it deals with the news.
Each type of meeting above calls for a unique Agenda. The person calling the board meeting must focus on setting the Agenda to avoid wasting people’s time. Download below Appendix 1 and see a Traditional Board Agenda. Make sure you avoid attending a meeting with such an Agenda as it wastes a lot of time on past or historical analysis instead of focusing on the present and the future of the business.
Recommended: Getting a board appointment
As you can see in Appendix 1 you have downloaded, the Agenda has so many items to facilitate detailed decision making and value addition by members. It is common to attend a board meeting where the Chair spends over 30 minutes of productive time reviewing minutes, item 4 of the Agenda.
In the next article, I will share a template for a modern meeting agenda ideal for all kinds of meetings, board meeting or otherwise. After over seven years as a Board member, I have found that an effective chair defines a clear agenda with emphasis on strategic imperatives and answering questions. During the meeting, all members are alert as the Chair gets short airtime to allow members to contribute to the discussion.
Download your template here >> The-Traditional-Typical-Agendas.docx (980 downloads )
