Action-oriented Meetings
Meetings have the bad wrap of not leading to any meaningful action. So what can you do to make sure your meetings don’t earn a similar reputation? An effective strategy is to make sure that all your meetings have an action-oriented purpose.
Take the typical weekly staff meeting. Many would argue these often don’t seem to have any purpose. Others would say their purpose is to “Make sure everyone is updated on all the important things going on within the department or organization.”
While this purpose might have value, it isn’t very action-oriented. It implies that the meeting will be filled with reporting information to each other. It doesn’t say anything about how that information will be used.
The next time you are going to have one of these “update” type of staff meetings, consider making the following your purpose. “The goal of this meeting is to re-prioritize departmental activities for the coming week.” This purpose implies that people will be doing something different based on the outcome of the meeting.
How about a project meeting that is set up to “Discuss the upcoming trade-show in New York”? Again, if you want action, consider creating a meeting purpose statement that leads to action. Try this one, “Develop a detailed work-plan that we can use as we prepare for the New York trade-show.”
The best way to ensure action is to be specific about the type of action that you want. Once you know what it is, put it down in the meeting purpose and make sure everyone attending knows what it is.
