If you're looking to find the best way to plan a successful meeting, you've come to the right place. Meetings can be stressful to get together, so follow these few easy steps to making sure your meeting is the best it can be.
Before you even begin to plan the meeting itself, identify the reasoning behind this meeting. Is there an issue that needs to be addressed, or maybe a new initiative? Figure out the exact purpose of your meeting before moving on.
Sometimes a meeting isn't always completely necessary. Ask yourself if a whole meeting needs to be planned or if it can be discussed over email or a simple phone call. If you don't need the meeting, don't plan one!
If you've decided that the meeting is necessary, next you'll want to start planning what you want to discuss. Plan out the introduction to the meeting, context, and what to discuss. Decide on how much time you need speaking about each section of the meeting, and ensure you have a good amount of discussion time. People may have questions to ask, so decide if you want to include that after each segment or at the very end.
Keep in mind that you shouldn't make the meeting to lengthy either. If it's too long, people can start to become uninterested or distracted.
It's best to single out a group of people that will benefit most from this meeting instead of people who won't be able to take much from it. Select people who need to be informed about the topic and those who have information on it that can contribute to discussions. This is also when to decide if you'll be needing just a few people for a small meeting, or more people for a larger meeting. Be as inclusive as you'd like to be, thinking about how it'll benefit you and the participants.
Having a meeting in the morning is most likely the best time, considering everyone is surely to be at work already. Planning a meeting around lunch time or any later in the afternoon may come into conflict with people lunches and when they're going home.
Finalize the agenda and the list of people that you'd like to come to the meeting. Once this is all done, you can then start to send out invitations to everyone. Follow up with the agenda as well so that participants know what exactly the meeting is about.
It can be stressful to plan a meeting and get every thing in line, especially if you're on a time crunch. If you follow these few quick steps though, it can help to make everything a lot easier.