IN SHORT

1. Create clear meeting purpose and limit agenda to 3-5 key points
2. Send agenda ahead – include date, time, format, participants, and objectives
3. Try reverse planning – start with desired outcome and work backwards
4. Use timeboxing and silent brainstorming to boost engagement
5. Pro tip: Leave 10 minutes for feedback and assign a moderator to keep discussions on track
6. Optional: Use AI tools like Noiz to quickly summarize post-meeting content and recordings.

According to an Atlassian survey, people consider 72% of the meetings on their calendars to be useless. Yet, 62% of employees still attend meetings without a stated purpose, and most of these meetings end with a decision to schedule another meeting. The biggest reason people hate manager and client meetings is that they have no agenda. Without an agenda, people automatically dial into a Zoom call, switch on autopilot for the entire session, wondering why they were invited, and mentally plan their dinner. These meetings lack energy, focus, and direction.

Direction and focus are formed by the meeting agenda. This is a clear and step-by-step meeting plan that structurally indicates the topics and issues that your team should discuss. In other words, it’s a meeting itinerary to follow to stay on track. A meeting agenda helps focus on key aspects, manage time effectively, and gives participants the opportunity to prepare for a more productive meeting. People start feeling engaged when they understand that this time is being used wisely. To give them this understanding, start with a simple step — plan meetings and prepare the agenda. It’s not as long or difficult as it may seem. We have prepared tips that will help you quickly create an agenda, put participants in context, and make meetings productive.

Rules for Drafting an Agenda Format

Before each meeting, create a meeting outline with key points and assign roles. For example, if you are discussing the implementation of a new CRM system, it is worth assigning those responsible for analysis, integration issues, and testing. If you have a meeting for a new marketing campaign, a meeting brief might include such points as “current campaign overview”, “CR analysis”, “testing hypothesis”. This will prevent distractions from secondary issues. 

Here are the basic principles of creating a useful and simple meeting agenda template.

1. Define the purpose of the agenda to follow: Why the meeting is being held. This can be a discussion of current projects, finding a solution to a problem, exchanging ideas, or presenting results.
2. Structure the main topic of the business meeting agenda into specific questions and arrange them logically and by priority, from general discussion to details.
3. Limit yourself to 3-5 points. As a rule, more does not mean better. A committee meeting agenda where everyone discusses everything will not be effective.
4. Determine responsibilities for all meeting agenda items. This ensures that participants can prepare for the meeting.
5. Allocate time for each point so that the discussions do not drag on and all participants can plan their schedule.
6. Be sure to leave 10 minutes for feedback and questions.
7. Send the meeting templates to all participants in advance. This time is needed for preparation, agenda ideas, and understanding the goals.
8. During the meeting, someone should monitor the timing and structure and moderate the process. This is relevant for both internal team meetings and client meetings.

Meeting agenda example

A standard meeting agenda includes key aspects that are important for understanding the purpose of the meeting, as well as background information. Here is a sample agenda layout that will suit different companies:

You can create your own agenda template for meetings and share it with all departments or find a ready-made online formal meeting agenda template and use it.

Tips for Organizing an Agenda When You’re Done with Formal Agenda Meeting Templates

The Reverse Timing

Pre-read & Decision Method

Timeboxing

Silent meetings

Bonus: Tools to Boost Productivity After a Team Meeting

Even if your meeting went perfectly thanks to a clearly written agenda outline, it’s not the end. Meetings often leave behind a lot of notes, presentations, links to YouTube videos, and documents for later analysis. Going through all this can take up a lot of time. To quickly move on to action, try AI tools that will help you speed up your review.

For example, Noiz is an AI YouTube video summarizer that allows you to get a short and clear summary of the most important parts of any video. If you need to quickly review the content for a department meeting agenda or presentation, instead of spending an hour and a half watching it, Noiz will provide a short summary of the video in a minute.

Upload a link to the video, and Noiz will automatically create a short summary for you with all the important points and conclusions. You can set the level of detail as well as choose the format of the finished summary that you want to get. The tool works with different languages and summarizes videos of any length, up to 12-hour videos. It’s a great option to save time, reduce digital noise, and focus on really important tasks. After all, your goal is not just to have a productive discussion but also to achieve the desired result.