A meeting agenda is a structured document distributed before a meeting that lists the topics to be discussed, the time allocated to each, the person responsible for leading each item, and any pre-reading required. A well-written agenda is one of the most effective tools for running meetings that end on time and produce clear decisions.
At least 24 hours before the meeting, and 48-72 hours for anything requiring preparation or pre-reading. Sending an agenda 10 minutes before the meeting is not a real agenda · it does not give people time to prepare or to raise objections to the meeting itself. If you cannot send an agenda 24 hours in advance, consider whether the meeting is ready to happen at all.
An agenda is a planning document sent before the meeting · it lists what will be discussed. Meeting minutes are a record document completed during or after the meeting · they capture what was decided, what was discussed, and what actions were agreed. The agenda is forward-looking; the minutes are backward-looking. Both are needed for any meeting that produces decisions or actions.
Allocate time based on the decision required, not the topic's importance. A complex decision with pre-read material shared in advance might need only 15 minutes of discussion. A topic requiring group agreement from scratch might need 30 minutes. A standing update item should rarely need more than 5 minutes. Time-boxing every item is one of the most effective techniques for ending meetings on schedule.
Any information attendees need to contribute meaningfully to a discussion should be in pre-reads, not presented at the meeting. Data reports, proposals, background documents, and previous meeting minutes are all candidates. If you find yourself presenting data to an audience that could have read it in advance, you are wasting the most expensive part of the meeting: the time when everyone is together.
Where you can, yes. A question names what the discussion has to produce. "Q3 budget" invites a tour of the numbers. "Which two projects do we fund in Q3?" sets a finish line, and the group knows the item is done when the question has an answer. Questions also show who needs to be in the room: invite the people who can answer them, and let the others read the notes. If an item cannot be turned into a question, it is probably an update that fits in an email. Source: Steven G. Rogelberg, The Surprising Science of Meetings (2019).