What is the purpose of a meeting agenda?

“A clear purpose is the first step in an effective and successful meeting.”

The purpose of an agenda is to give the meeting a purpose or focus. This is especially important in team environments. At my work, a failed meeting usually results from lack of focus. According to the text, “A clear purpose is the first step in an effective and successful meeting” (Engleberg & Wynn, 2012). I agree with this requirement but I think that the idea of clear purpose is often lost in real meetings due to the fact that the idea or subject of the meeting was not narrowed properly and was too broad to be discussed in a concise manner. For example, having a meeting concerning a loss of sales is far too broad of a subject because there are numerous factors which could cause this type of failure in a business. It would be more effective for the supervisors to have small groups or teams investigate the problem in order to determine the causes of this problem and then have a meeting to present ideas for solutions. So rather than having a meeting about loss of sales, the company would have a meeting about sales loss due to poor customer service and how to fix this issue. This lack of focus happens often which is understandable because managers are often looking find the issues but inadvertently they waste time with conjecture and assumptions rather than identifying the issue first and then trying to find the solutions.

References

Engleberg, I. Wynn, D. (2012) Working in Groups: Communication Principles and Strategies 6 Edition Pearson

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