Start With the Purpose
Being crystal clear about why you’re bringing people together is one of the simplest ways to improve a meeting.
Why are you meeting?
And what do you hope to walk away with?
I always suggest actually writing down the purpose of the meeting in a sentence or two. That exercise alone can be revealing. Sometimes it clarifies what the meeting should focus on, and sometimes it raises a more basic question: do we even need a meeting for this?
But it’s not just the purpose that matters. It’s also important to be clear about what kind of meeting this is.
Is the group expected to make a decision?
Are people there to share information?
Is the goal to explore ideas or build alignment?
All of those are valid reasons to bring people together. What matters is being clear (both for yourself as the meeting lead and for participants) about the role people are being asked to play. This clarity then becomes an anchor throughout the meeting.
A clear purpose gives you something to come back to during the meeting. When the conversation starts to drift (it always does…) you can use it to refocus the group and “park” topics that aren’t directly related.
It also helps establish clear expectations. Without them, people may arrive expecting a decision to be made, while the meeting organizer sees the conversation as exploratory, or vice versa.
I’ve seen this play out both as a facilitator and as a participant, especially when groups are asked to vote on a proposal. When participants know both the proposal and that a vote is expected, they can think through their position and talk with others beforehand. Without that clarity, the conversation rarely ends up where anyone hoped.
For longer meetings, that same clarity can also apply to individual segments. For example, the first morning might simply be about establishing the “lay of the land.”
When I build agendas, I often draft a short purpose statement for each segment of time. Doing that helps me anticipate how the conversation might unfold and how each section builds toward the overall goal of the meeting. One segment might build shared understanding, another might explore innovative ideas, and a later one might move the group toward a decision.
As I mentioned in the first post in this series, great meetings don’t happen by accident. When the purpose and type of meeting are clear, everything else - the agenda, the conversation, and the outcomes - becomes much easier to design.
