Agendas are something most business people keep. For a number of reasons that will be highlighted here, most of us should, in fact, get in to the habit of making agendas for all appointments, major and minor. How many times have you gone to meet with someone, whether its your business partner or your building contractor, you've had several important questions to ask them, several things you're dying to know. What happens, your brain freezes, you're all ditzy. For the life of you, it's impossible to remember whatever it was you wanted to talk about...that thing...um...yeah...no.
If this is or has ever been you, then agendas are definitely for you. They're essential.
An agenda for your meeting is the opportunity to establish important information. You can list the topics for discussion, you can also establish how much time you want to spend talking about each topic; essentially, you establish the order of importance. You can then use your agenda as a very simple but very useful checklist so you know that you don't go off the point; at least, if you do, you know exactly where you were.
In business even more than in your personal life, an agenda can make all the difference between a successful presentation to your clients and a complete and unmitigated disaster.
If you have a meeting, establish an agenda well before hand. The advantages are: you can provide an outline of the meeting, you make sure everyone at the meeting has a checklist to ensure that all information is covered, you let everyone have ample time to add items for discussion in the meeting (a great team building exercise).
Generally, to go about creating your agenda you should first, send out an e-mail or some other form of communication to let everyone know about the meeting, including its goals, the where-and-when. After that, ask everyone who is invited to accept or decline the formal invitation. You'll have head-count of who's coming (useful for setting up water glasses and other miscellaneous).
Request that all the meeting participants contact you no less than two days before the meeting with their requests, if any, for discussion topics plus a good estimate of how much time they need to present and discuss their issue.
Next, once all the agenda requests are submitted, you can go ahead and summarize them all. Organize the information under the following three headings: Agenda Item, Presenter, and Time. You can then have a fairly good blue print for the entire meeting.
Send out a copy of the finished agenda to everyone you expect to turn up. Let them know to contact you quickly if they need any of the information changed. Specifically, you should check that everyone is happy wit the meeting goals, the location, the time, and the proposed duration of the meeting. Check also that everyone who is going to speak is happy with the order that they are going to be speaking in plus the amount of time they've been given to speak.
If anyone's unhappy, it's a judgment call whether or not you make changes but at least discuss the problems like adults.
At the end of the day, you will have in front of you an excellent meeting agenda. The most important step, though: follow though during your meeting.