To Dos: Getting in Action

We believe that a meeting without action is anti-productive.The to-do list is crucial, because it’s a record of your team’s short term commitments and a space for you to hold each other accountable. To-dos often look like implementing a decision you’ve made, gathering information, purchasing and pursuing opportunities. 

A team that completes all its to-dos can achieve something more. This happens because it begins to view itself and it’s members as highly effective; as unstoppable. The teams find new ways to take on more responsibility, and velocity continues to grow. 

While it requires a high level of accountability, it’s not a time to be judgmental. Even the healthiest teams slip-up. Instead, restore your integrity by admitting to the mistake and by creating a process to ensure it doesn’t happen twice. We’re all on the same team and teams take a stand for each other.

A very common mistake is to view this section as a status report. It’s not. Do not spend valuable time reading this to-do list out loud. Instead, participants should silently read through all the to-dos with intentionality. Ask yourselves: Are there any next steps, any follow ups? Anything that needs to be shared? What kept this to-do from being completed? But crucially, do not discuss during this section. Instead add them to the topics list where you may choose to prioritize and discuss them later. Your goal is to aggregate topics, not discuss them.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single to-do. Level up your to-dos and your meeting will follow.

The Topic Section

“The secret to an exceptional meeting.”

The first secret to an effective meeting is capturing all your topics on one list. These are the biggest opportunities and problems you’re facing at the moment.
The second secret is to prioritize the 3 or 4 topics by what’s most important to the team at this moment in time. Never choose the interesting, urgent, or easy. These are productivity traps. Always choose the most important topic. 

Start with the first topic. Slow down, zoom out, and find the root cause… You know, the real problem. Without identifying the root cause, you forfeit your opportunity of solving the problem permanently. Next, have a robust conversation as a team to solve this permanently in an inspiring way. Finally, turn that problem into a to-do with an owner and a due date.

Rinse and repeat. Get on to solving your next most important topic.

External Links & Notes

 Want to share an online page such as Google sheets, docs or an internal link? Use the website link section! It can be better than sharing screenshots, comments or notes. By having the link within your agenda, you can ensure the meeting does not go over while looking over the external link. Let’s keep our meetings on track!

Last but not least… Need a time or place where everyone can chime in, like a brainstorm session? The notes section is a blank canvas where everyone can collaborate simultaneously within the same document. This ensures that notes are taken within the meeting and all are heard.

Discover meetings that matter with Meetings.io!