Building Agendas to Deliver the Output You Need from Your Meeting

Building Agendas to Deliver the Output You Need from Your Meeting

by | Jan 7, 2016 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure

You should use these steps when building agendas because following them will increase your meeting success and personal reputation. Before we begin, let us remember the definition of a solid, structured meeting agenda:

Agenda Defined

Building Agendas

Eleven Steps for Building Agendas

An agenda is a series of steps that structure a group discussion throughout a meeting or workshop. The MGRUSH technique provides field-tested agendas that work effectively to accelerate information gathering and improve decision-making methods. Therefore, a robust and effective agenda enables you . . .

  • . . . the facilitator (i.e., the session leader) to lead the discussion, with . . .
  • Subject matter experts who are experts about content but NOT about context or meeting technique. They will rise to a consensual understanding with evidence-based information . . .
  • That makes the next steps clear (i.e., the meeting output or deliverable including for example, decision-making or prioritization), thus
  • Enabling your stakeholders to use information and decisions that accelerate and advance project objectives and organizational goals.

Use these steps when building a meeting agenda. Sequentially begin with meeting purpose, scope, and session (i.e., meeting or workshop) deliverables. Only then can you create a simple agenda and begin sharing among your participants.

  • Write down your deliverable and strive to get examples! Note that deliverables illustrate the required documentation and needed information. What are we producing? Show participants examples if you are building a model. Align with the enterprise and business unit strategic plans to help reconcile tradeoffs in your decision-making process.
  • Codify your deliverables—What specific content creates success as the output of your workshop? What is the optimal sequence for gathering it? Who will use it after the meeting is complete? Better stated, “What does DONE look like?”
  • Quantify the impact of the meeting on the program and articulate the project or meeting scope. Identify the level of detail desired, the type of session (planning, problem-solving, design, etc.), and what to accomplish in the workshop. Understand what might be excluded (due to scope); or what the purpose and scope are NOT.
  • Identify and compose the simple steps that enable you to organize the known information, identify the missing information, and produce the deliverables identified previously. Compose a series of steps from experience. Consider the analytical methods used by other experts to make decisions, solve problems, or develop the necessary information.
    • Consider internal life-cycle methods, cultural expectations, and what other projects have been used in the past within your organization.
    • Study the MGRUSH curriculum and consider its pre-built planning, analysis, and design workshops with agendas that have been proven to work for others in the past.
    • Do some research and find out what others are doing; competitors, competitive industries, competitive alternatives, and the most current academic approaches.
    • Talk to others, especially project team members and business community subject matter experts to determine some of the major components they would include in a simple agenda.

Send us a sample for analysis and feedback if you are a graduate of the MGRUSH Professional curriculum.

  • Review steps for logical flow—walk through the steps to confirm the desired outputs probably produced.
  • Determine likely meeting participants—Identify the most likely participants and identify their level of understanding about the business issues and the method you have drafted for them to develop the information during your agenda steps.
  • Identify any agenda steps that the participants cannot complete—modify or eliminate the steps that your specific participants may not understand, will not value, or are inappropriate for their level of experience.
  • Identify what information is needed to fill the gaps from step number six above, and determine how to get this additional information (e.g., offline)—What information or analysis is required to substitute for the missing information identified in step number six above that your meeting participants cannot provide?
  • Detail the final agenda steps to capture required information for the open issues—build the appropriate activities to produce the information without making the participants perform unnecessary activities (e.g., do NOT do team building if they already function together properly).
  • Review—Confirm steps number one and two above and then carefully review the detailed activities with stakeholders to confirm that they satisfy the purpose and provide the needed information without over-challenging or intimidating your participants.
  • Perform a walk-through, including documentation format or templates, with other business experts, executive sponsors, and project team members.
  • Refine—Make any changes identified in the walk-through and begin to build out your annotated agenda as suggested by the MGRUSH curriculum.

Identify the most appropriate participants

  • Identify what knowledge or expertise each needs to bring to the workshop. Determine how much of the agenda the participants understand and can reasonably complete in a group environment. Identify what issues they have—do they need team-building or creativity or some management of behavior? Furthermore, identify someone who will provide resistance at the meeting so that you can learn to anticipate challenges that will develop. You may not want to avoid the issues because they need to surface; however, you do not want to be surprised or caught off guard.

 Walk through the steps to see if you can produce the desired results with the proposed participants. Do the steps allow the group to build on prior work without jumping around? Are the steps logical? Will the deliverables be comprehensive?

Also, Consider the Following When Building a Meeting Agenda

  • Existing enterprise systems or processes (life cycle)
  • Architecture infrastructure (consider drafting a baseline architectural pattern)
  • Scoping/ phasing (what high-level information supports the deliverable)
  • Consider existing process models, high-level ERD, and actors’ security/ policy

______

In a world where everyone can engage in decisions that affect them

______

Lead the Change—One Meeting at a Time

Are you ready to transform how decisions are made, problems are solved, and alignment is built in your organization?

True meeting leadership goes beyond setting an agenda. It requires a facilitator who can navigate complexity, balance voices, and drive toward outcomes with clarity and consensus. Our Professional Meeting Leadership Workshop and facilitation training equips you to do just that—blending human-centric methods with structured analytical tools to foster rigor, inclusivity, and results that stick.

  • Practice live.
  • Get expert feedback.
  • Build confidence that lasts.

Whether your meetings suffer from unclear objectives, disengaged participants, or decision fatigue, this workshop will help you identify the root causes, apply proven facilitation techniques, and emerge as the leader every team needs.

Take the first step today—transform your meetings and magnify your impact.

______

👉 Click here to reserve your seat now.

#facilitationtraining #meetingdesign

Because every meeting should be a catalyst for change—not just another calendar event.

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we provide the following for your benefit and reference.

______

Become a Humane Human, Understand WHY Behind WHAT

Become a Humane Human, Understand WHY Behind WHAT

by | Dec 24, 2015 | Communication Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict

The opposite of being a humane human. Road Rage. Have you been irritated by someone else’s driving? Of course, we all have.

Today I realized however that I am likely guilty of doing the precise thing that others have done to piss me off. However, when I did it, there was justification—of course. When they did the same thing, however, they were wrong, dumb, stupid, and worthy of decapitation. So what’s the difference?

On Being a Humane Human

Have you ever made a right turn in an automobile very slowly, because your grandma was in the back seat, or you didn’t want the pie to spill, or the house number you were seeking was right around the corner? Imagine so. But when someone makes the turn incredibly slowly in front of you, they are being rude and inconsiderate, correct? So what’s the difference?

Become a Humane Human, Understand WHY Behind WHAT

Become a Humane Human: Understand the WHY Behind the WHAT

The difference evidences itself when you seek to understand WHY. Chances are, the person who upset you had good reason in their own mind and was not attempting to be intentionally inconsiderate. They were not malicious at all. They simply had their own reasons.

We should always stay mindful of the phrase in St Francis’ Peace Prayer—Seek to understand, rather than being understood. The Dalai Lama also has a nice way of expressing similar sentiment when he states (paraphrased)—“When you speak, you are saying something you already know. When you listen, you may learn something new.”

Facilitators Need to Challenge WHY

As facilitators, we cannot afford to let down our guard. Keep the ego in the hallway. Challenge meeting and workshop participants to justify their positions by explaining WHY they are making a particular claim. Chances are, we will discover something new. By active listening through the reflection and confirmation of their rationale, we can begin to build consensus.

Would it bother you if I turned slowly around a corner if you already knew that I had an infirmed occupant or something that might spill?  I imagine not, as you would likely have some compassion, not because you liked WHAT I was doing, but because you understood WHY I was doing it.

To build consensus, make sure everyone understands WHY claims are being made. They likely hear what the other person said (or did), but since it upsets them, they fail to understand nor strive to understand WHY. That’s your job as a facilitator. Build consensus around WHY since most WHAT everyone believes is not simply black or white, rather it is conditional. It’s your job to get the group to understand under what conditions someone’s erratic thoughts or behavior may in fact echo the same thing you would do if you were in their shoes.

______

Lead the Change—One Meeting at a Time

Are you ready to transform how decisions are made, problems are solved, and alignment is built in your organization?

True meeting leadership goes beyond setting an agenda. It requires a facilitator who can navigate complexity, balance voices, and drive toward outcomes with clarity and consensus. Our Professional Meeting Leadership Workshop and facilitation training equips you to do just that—blending human-centric methods with structured analytical tools to foster rigor, inclusivity, and results that stick.

  • Practice live.
  • Get expert feedback.
  • Build confidence that lasts.

Whether your meetings suffer from unclear objectives, disengaged participants, or decision fatigue, this workshop will help you identify the root causes, apply proven facilitation techniques, and emerge as the leader every team needs.

Take the first step today—transform your meetings and magnify your impact.

👉 Click here to reserve your seat now.

(Limited availability)

Because every meeting should be a catalyst for change—not just another calendar event.

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we provide the following for your benefit and reference.

______

Data Transformation — How to convert a single piece of data into a visual display of 16 elements

Data Transformation — How to convert a single piece of data into a visual display of 16 elements

by | Dec 17, 2015 | Decision Making, Meeting Tools

With data transformation, each piece of data or single cell might be decomposed into another layer. Amplify this approach even further by splitting your four cells into sixteen.

Therefore, see the chart below. We can now ask, generate, and record sixteen pieces of information on a large Post-It® for each assignment. Note how we take the four basic criteria below and expand them into four additional details (for illustrative purposes only). 

Other Best Practices articles instructed that one key to facilitating effective analysis mandates the facilitator to ask open-ended questions, not simple, close-ended (i.e., yes or no) confirmations. For example, and pardon the simplicity, do not ask “Does the sport of curling involve any sweat?” Someone will make a compelling argument that it does, albeit minimal perhaps. The superior question, simply re-phrased:  “To what extent does the sport of curling involve sweat? (a lot, little, or somewhere in between)”.

When building a roles and responsibilities matrix for example, the classic approach identifies who is going to be ‘Responsible’ for some apportioned activity or assignment, and the appropriate single cell is given a large, red “R”.  At minimum you might ask four questions, such as:

  1. What role will be responsible for this assignment? (e.g., Business Analyst)
  2. When will we reach completion? (e.g., date specific)
  3. How much financial resources will be required to complete it? (eg, $,$$$)
  4. What is the estimated FTE required to bring it to completion? (FTE = full-time equivalent, such as 0.25 which is one person, full-time, for three months)
Power of a Single Cell to Make Your Deliverables More Robust

Power of the Single Cell

  1. What role will be responsible for this assignment? (e.g., RASI Chart)

    1. What role is ultimately being held Accountable and paying for this initiative? (e.g., EVP)
    2. What role will be Responsible for this assignment? (e.g., Business Analyst)
    3. What roles will be Supporting this assignment? (e.g., Project Manager)
    4. What roles need to be Informed about this assignment? (e.g., Customer)

  2. At what estimated point in time will we reach completion? (e.g., date specific)

    1. When does concerted effort begin? (e.g., date specific)
    2. What is the projected halfway point? (e.g., date specific)
    3. At what estimated point in time will completion be final? (e.g., date specific)
    4. When will the effort be reviewed such as Retrospective or Look Back? (e.g., date specific)

  3. How much financial resources will be required to complete it? (eg, $,$$$)

    1. What are the estimated research costs? (e.g., $,$$$)
    2. What are the estimated acquisition costs? (e.g., $,$$$)
    3. What are the estimated operational costs? (e.g., $,$$$)
    4. What are the estimated termination costs? (e.g., $,$$$)

  4. What is the estimated FTP required to bring it to completion? (FTP = full-time person, such as 0.25 which is one person, full-time, for three months)

    1. What maximum number of people work at the same time? (e.g., Quantity)
    2. Call on which special subject matter experts? (e.g., Title[s])
    3. How much FTP will bring it to completion? (e.g., FTP)
    4. Codify any special issues not described above. (narrative, perhaps coded)

Having left a meeting can be comforting because the amount of detail described above is substantial, but knowing that it was consensually built and is now owned by the meeting participants is reassuring. When applied to a project plan, using questions similar to the ones shown above, you will deliver a more detailed GANTT chart than most people build in their cubicles alone. Hand this off to an intern who claims to be an “expert” with Microsoft Project Manager® and tell them to bring you back a full resource-allocated project plan so that you can go on to your next meeting.

______

Lead the Change—One Meeting at a Time

Are you ready to transform how decisions are made, problems are solved, and alignment is built in your organization?

True meeting leadership goes beyond setting an agenda. It requires a facilitator who can navigate complexity, balance voices, and drive toward outcomes with clarity and consensus. Our Professional Meeting Leadership Workshop and facilitation training equips you to do just that—blending human-centric methods with structured analytical tools to foster rigor, inclusivity, and results that stick.

  • Practice live.
  • Get expert feedback.
  • Build confidence that lasts.

Whether your meetings suffer from unclear objectives, disengaged participants, or decision fatigue, this workshop will help you identify the root causes, apply proven facilitation techniques, and emerge as the leader every team needs.

Take the first step today—transform your meetings and magnify your impact.

👉 Click here to reserve your seat now.

(Limited availability)

Because every meeting should be a catalyst for change—not just another calendar event.

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we provide the following for your benefit and reference.

______

Related video

Facilitate a Decision Matrix to Document Supporting Rationale

Facilitate a Decision Matrix to Document Supporting Rationale

by | Dec 10, 2015 | Meeting Structure

A decision matrix supports both decision-making and decision quality at the same time. A decision matrix can be viewed as the ‘logic’ behind all decisions, providing the rationale for both the support and reasons to de-select or de-emphasize one of the options.

Method to Create a Decision Matrix

First, determine and agree upon the “Purpose” of the object or topic being decided. Then separately list and define your options. Follow up with a detailed and objective understanding of the decision criteria. Copy them into a simple X-Y grid as shown below.

Use the “Creativity” tool or narrative “Brainstorming” to develop lists of both the options being considered and the criteria to be used to evaluate the options. By applying “PowerBalls” and carefully wording our questions, we can now assess the impact of each criterion on each of the options with a simple decision matrix. For example, if we want to know which sports to target in a marketing campaign, we might develop two lists and populate the decision matrix as shown below:

Facilitate a Decision Matrix to Document Supporting Rationale

Basic Decision Matrix

  • At the intersection of each criterion and option, ask precisely the following at the start of your analysis effort.

“TO WHAT EXTENT DOES ‘X’ IMPACT (OR RELATE) TO ‘Y’?”

  • From the example above we might determine that from the perspective of a sports drink company, ‘Basketball’ is a more desirable option than ‘Curling.’

CAUTION: AVOID THE CLOSE-ENDED QUESTION “Does ‘X’ involve ‘Y’?”  There is always a subject matter expert who can draw the correlation.  Conceding ‘Relativity’ we are not after “Does it?”.  Rather, we are focused on the degree, intensity, level, or to what extent does it.

Benefits of a Decision Matrix

Always provide your executive sponsor or steering team with a decision matrix to back up your decision. This simple but highly effective visual tool preempts their common question, “Why did you select ‘X’?”  The decision matrix provides a visual display of your rationale and trail of logic.  Furthermore, if the decision changes, it forces the team to adjust their logic. Once documented, it enables your team to be consistent with subsequent decisions.

______

Lead the Change—One Meeting at a Time

Are you ready to transform how decisions are made, problems are solved, and alignment is built in your organization?

True meeting leadership goes beyond setting an agenda. It requires a facilitator who can navigate complexity, balance voices, and drive toward outcomes with clarity and consensus. Our Professional Meeting Leadership Workshop equips you to do just that—blending human-centric methods with structured analytical tools to foster rigor, inclusivity, and results that stick.

  • Practice live.
  • Get expert feedback.
  • Build confidence that lasts.

Whether your meetings suffer from unclear objectives, disengaged participants, or decision fatigue, this workshop will help you identify the root causes, apply proven facilitation techniques, and emerge as the leader every team needs.

Take the first step today—transform your meetings and magnify your impact.

👉 Click here to reserve your seat now.

(Limited availability)

Because every meeting should be a catalyst for change—not just another calendar event.

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we provide the following for your benefit and reference.

______

Demonstration Video

 

Voting Sucks Because it Leads to Bigger Numbers but Lower Quality Decisions

Voting Sucks Because it Leads to Bigger Numbers but Lower Quality Decisions

by | Dec 3, 2015 | Decision Making, Meeting Structure

Western society, and to an increasing amount, the rest of the world, depends on the voting method of decision-making.

Various levels of government including federal, state, and local elections rely on plurality voting, whereby one person equals one vote. While some will argue that a benevolent autocrat provides a fairer form of governance, most democracies rely on a multi-level system for its checks and balances. For example, tripartite arrangements normally allow separate voting for the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Democracies frequently refer to this method as “Plurality Voting.” Experience shows that voting leads to lower-quality decisions and many conclude, voting sucks.

Why Voting Leads to Bigger Numbers but Lower Quality Decisions

Voting Results in Winners and Losers

There are other methods of voting, to avoid lower-quality decisions, and arguably none of them are as effective as consensus-based decision-making. Note for example . . .

Approval Voting

Method:  Voters are provided one vote for each option they deem acceptable.

Examples:  Numerous not-for-profit organizations use Approval Voting to select their board of directors and officers.

Results:  The approach does little to distinguish between acceptable options and outstanding options. Results have been known to be highly erratic.

Borda Count

Method:  Voters ordinate all options from top to bottom, where more is better.  With ten options, the best is assigned a value of ten while the least favorite is assigned a value of one. The highest score wins.

Examples:  The method used by the Associated Press for its college football and basketball rankings.

Results:  The favorite method of promoters for voting, unfortunately, does little to help distinguish the mid-range and lower-tier options. As voters know less or become more ambivalent (e.g., fourth versus fifth), final tallies can become quite skewed.

Cumulative Voting

Method:  Voters are assigned a batch of votes (i.e., units of value). They distribute them across the options as they see fit. With a batch of ten votes, for example, you may assign seven votes to your favorite and three to your second favorite.

Examples:  Texas and Arkansas use this method in some legal jurisdictions along with some corporate board rooms.

Results:  There are bound to be winners and losers—much gaming is involved when, for example, your second favorite is more likely to be the victor, yet each unit assigned to your second choice, reduces the chances of your first choice being selected. Reportedly, many “second favorites” win with this method (see the Abilene Paradox).

Electoral College

Method:  Winners of the presidential election in each state get all of the pre-assigned electoral votes (equal to the number of seats in Congress), regardless of the margin of victory.

Examples:  Only in America, where most states assign their marginal winners, all of their electoral votes.

Results:  Since it is possible to “win” the popular vote but “lose” the election, some have suggested that the Supreme Court of America will rule on its legality.  Look at the Gore versus Bush election in 2000.

Instant Runoff

Method:  Voters rank their options and if the top pick does not generate a simple majority (i.e., greater than 50 percent), the option with the fewest votes is dropped, and members vote again until a winner emerges.

Examples:  Jurisdictions worldwide, from Australia to San Francisco rely on this method.

Results:  While arguably a stronger method than simple “Plurality Voting”, mathematical models have shown that sub-optimal (i.e., initially secondary or tertiary options) options rise faster than the primary option and frequently “win”.

Our MGRUSH alumni have experienced the weakness of voting with the Goethe demonstration during class. Unlike consensus building that yields a win-win result, voting represents bigger numbers, not better decisions. Plus, there is always a loser.

______

Lead the Change—One Meeting at a Time

Are you ready to transform how decisions are made, problems are solved, and alignment is built in your organization?

True meeting leadership goes beyond setting an agenda. It requires a facilitator who can navigate complexity, balance voices, and drive toward outcomes with clarity and consensus. Our Professional Meeting Leadership Workshop equips you to do just that—blending human-centric methods with structured analytical tools to foster rigor, inclusivity, and results that stick.

  • Practice live.
  • Get expert feedback.
  • Build confidence that lasts.

Whether your meetings suffer from unclear objectives, disengaged participants, or decision fatigue, this workshop will help you identify the root causes, apply proven facilitation techniques, and emerge as the leader every team needs.

Take the first step today—transform your meetings and magnify your impact.

👉 Click here to reserve your seat now.

(Limited availability)

Because every meeting should be a catalyst for change—not just another calendar event.

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we provide the following for your benefit and reference.

______