Meetings, agendas and minutes

Meetings are essential in any organisation but you need to monitor whether or not they are serving any real purpose. If they are not, they should be dropped or radically changed. Every meeting, especially a regular meeting, should have a very clear purpose, not only to you, but also to your team. Then, in order to make its importance clear to your team, you should ensure the following:

• an agenda should be sent out in advance, where possible giving your team members the opportunity to contribute to it. The number of items should be clearly manageable and not overwhelming. There should also be at the beginning a brief review of the action points from the last meeting.
• items on the agenda should have a time-limit and a designated person responsible for them. There should also be an appointed  chair (not necessarily you as the manager but the person who can best chair a meeting in your team), a minute-taker and a time-keeper.
• The minutes should be brief and to the point with action points and a named person responsible for each action point and a deadline by when the item should be achieved. The minutes should be distributed promptly to everyone as soon as possible after the meeting.

Useful links:

http://www.practicallyperfectpa.com/2012/tips-on-good-minute-taking/10/03/