ENGAGING AGENDAS

The foundation for highly productive meetings

Healthcare Architects Ontario

Healthcare Architects spend a lot of time preparing for stakeholder engagement meetings. We do early and thorough internal preparation to efficiently utilize stakeholder time during the meeting.

Communicating effectively to keep the users engaged and receiving valuable feedback is important to move every healthcare project forward. There is indeed a secret to conducting these meetings to be highly productive.

A thoughtfully created agenda is key to any well-organized meeting.

A clear agenda balances purpose, prioritization and engagement, driving meetings toward actionable outcomes while respecting everyone’s time. The clarity lies in simplicity, specificity and focus.

Healthcare Architects Ontario

Here are some key principles in creating an agenda:

Clear Purpose

Virtual meetings may have a title which is usually too short to convey the real reason for the meeting. Therefore, as soon as a meeting is booked, it is of prime importance to identify and define the purpose of the meeting.

Every attendee’s time is a valuable resource and the key to conducting a productive meeting is to clearly communicate the purpose in writing well ahead of time. This sets the standard or a goal for everyone in attendance. ‘Well begun is half done’ for highly efficient use of everyone’s time.

Prioritize

A long list of items on the agenda may be counterproductive. And not everything is equally important.

Therefore, once the issues to be discussed or presented are identified, the process of prioritizing what issues to move up on the agenda or eliminate out of the agenda is of primary importance.

This prevents critical items from being overlooked. Topics must be ordered by significance or urgency.

Assigned time slots

There may be topics that are irrelevant for some attendees. Specified slots of time for topics allow them to manage their time effectively and leave after the topic has been discussed. This is a highly efficient way of avoiding time overruns.

Clear roles and responsibilities

If the meeting has more than one presenter, discussion leads can be assigned the topic along with the time slot. This ensures that the speakers are prepared and provides a structure to the meeting.

Follow up Action Steps

Every productive meeting must end with a brief discussion on next steps. Action items with assigned names ensure accountability and set the standards for follow-up.

It is common nowadays for virtual meetings to occupy a majority of the calendar during the workday. This may result in focused work overflowing onto precious time with family.

At Clover, we conduct all our internal and client meetings with specific durations and pre-circulated agendas.

This is ingrained in our culture that helps us stay true to our mission of a sustainable work-life balance for everyone. It ensures that everyone is fully engaged for the entire duration of each meeting. Highly effective meetings free up time in our daily schedules for other focused productive work. As a small service business, our people’s time is highly valuable to us. This optimization of resources helps us deliver the highest quality of service to our clients at the lowest possible internal cost.

Healthcare Architect Ontario

Graphic buildings and Clover flower

Key Takeaways:

Highly productive meetings directly affect the bottom line for small service businesses
Agendas for every internal and external meeting must be a requirement. Without an agenda, there is no purpose for the meeting.
Clearly written agendas for meetings lead to a sustainable work-life balance for the team

The Clover Approach