business plan agenda

Your Strategy Planning Meeting Agenda (with Template)

Have you been asked to pull together a strategy planning meeting agenda? And you’re wondering what other people do in their strategic planning sessions… I’ve been there!

In this article, I’ll explain what a strategic planning meeting can cover and share a sample agenda you can customize for your strategy sessions.

Strategy planning doesn’t just happen. You can’t put people in a room and expect there to be a 3-year plan at the end of it. The conversations need a structure to help keep the pace and ensure the meeting runs smoothly. And that’s where the agenda comes in, as part of your pre-meeting prep.

What should a strategic planning meeting include?

A strategic planning meeting should include:

• A review of organizational objectives
• An assessment of how you are doing against those objectives
• Decisions around what needs to be sped up, slowed down, started or stopped in order to better align activity with the objectives.

If you think about the point of having a strategy discussion, it’s really to either define the strategy or to decide if you are on track with delivering the strategy . What you need to include in the meeting has to tie back to those points.

In other words, what do you want to get out of your strategic planning process? Is it a new strategic plan? An update to the last one because something drastic has changed? A review with some ‘light editing’ to ensure decisions are being taken that keep you on track to meet your goals?

What goes into your meeting (and therefore, your agenda) will very much depend on where you are in the strategy planning cycle.

When do strategic meetings happen?

There’s no fixed cadence for strategy conversations. Some businesses use quarterly meetings. Some might do a lot of planning during the existing structure of board meetings. As long as sufficient time is put aside for strategic thinking, you can set whatever frequency of meeting you like.

I would recommend quarterly review sessions, with a longer goal-setting session once a year, but do whatever works for you. If you are putting together your first strategy or doing a complete overhaul, you’ll need to spend a lot more time on it to get the strategic process set up and the relevant data collected.

Planning a successful virtual strategy meeting

Strategy meetings tend to be quite long. You might put a full day or even two aside for your planning, perhaps another full day the following week for the follow up.

For that reason, it’s often better to do them in-person instead of remote, but do what works best for you and the team.

Personally I would prefer to meet in person as in my experience you get better engagement with the process.

If you have to hold the workshop remotely, with people dialling in, make sure you schedule enough screen breaks. I put a break in at least after every 90 minutes — people just can’t focus for that long.

You can also use breakout rooms to set people up to work in small groups (in person or remotely using your collaboration software) so they can interact more easily.

Sample strategy planning meeting agenda template

Every effective meeting needs an agenda, and the great thing about strategic sessions is that you can tailor the agenda to cover the topics that would be the most valuable to wherever you are in the planning cycle. The strategic planning agenda below assumes you are meeting in-person, and is suitable for a strategic review session.

9.30am: Welcome

Use this time for introductions. Do an ice breaker exercise if your attendees won’t think it is cheesy (mine would).

I start by sharing the meeting objectives and making it clear this is a strategic meeting so people don’t get carried away with the detail. Discuss ways of working e.g. who is capturing what actions, what you’ll do if there is a stalemate for a decision, what decision-making tools you are using.

You might want to introduce ground rules for the session such as

• No taking calls in the room
• Take space, make space
• Share your experience

etc. I think my delegates would find this a little patronizing as they have all worked together for many years, but I can also see that there would be circumstances in which it is appropriate to refresh expectations.

If you think they would value having some guardrails for acceptable behavior during the conversations, then by all means add time for that into the agenda at this point.

10am: Big picture strategy

Present the overall roadmap, for example, a timeline for the 5 year plan. Make sure everyone is clear on where the organization is going and what big chunks make that up. For example, perhaps you have a couple of different portfolios that support the strategy.

You can use this time to talk about the current situation, the company’s strategy and how your department fits into that. This section should answer the question: where are we now?

10.30am: Coffee break

Give people time for a bathroom break and to get something to drink. Bonus points if you provide the coffee!

10.45am: Progress review

Have each executive or leader in the room share their area’s progress against their area of the strategic plan. They can bring in team members to present specific topics if that would help, and if their expertise is needed as part of the debate.

These presentations don’t necessarily need to be formal, but they should cover what objectives the department is working to, how they link to the big picture strategy and whether they are on track. Talk about whether milestones are on track to be hit. Present the budget figures related to the area and the confidence levels around meeting those.

This section of the agenda might be long, depending on how many leaders you have to get round, so adjust the rest of the agenda to fit your timings. I’d suggest everyone gets 30 minutes but it depends on what you think they have to share and how much discussion there will be about each area. If possible, timebox the updates so you keep the meeting moving.

Alternative session: Where do we want to be?

If you haven’t got strategic progress to report, use this time to:

• Brainstorm where you want to be
• Agree where you are going
• Create a vision for the next 3 years
• Document the vision and mission.

12.45pm: Lunch break

Schedule in some time to eat and return calls. I think people get back to the meeting more quickly if you provide lunch in the room.

1.30pm: Key issues

It’s worth parking the discussion of any major issues that affect multiple areas until after everyone has had a chance to present their updates, because then it’s easier to see the bigger picture and what might be affected.

Use this time to review anything that dropped out of the morning’s conversations. There might be new opportunities, challenges, resource constraints, market changes and more.

This section of your day should answer the question: what might stop us from getting where we want to go? Think about the values, skills, culture and risks that might block your progress.

2.30pm: Revise plans

After you’ve discussed the challenges or opportunities that present themselves, go back to the plans and see how that information affects what you are committing to do for the next period.

Agree changes as required. This part of your agenda answers the question: what do we need to do? If you do need to do anything differently in order to get back on track or head off in the right direction, this is where you should be discussing and agreeing.

3.30pm: Action planning

I like action planning! Strategy meetings should be all about decision-making, so you should ring-fence some time to talk about how to turn those decisions into action items . List out what needs to be done and allocate owners and timescales to each.

One thing that should definitely be on the action list is how you are going to communicate the decisions made today to everyone else in the team. Add them to the decision log . Make sure someone is responsible for creating and circulating meeting minutes .

This is an important part of the strategy meeting and it answers the question: how will we do it?

4.30pm: Any Other Business

Use this time for the ‘one last thing’ that people want to bring up. If you’ve had a parking lot up on the wall, check that all the topics have follow up actions planned so the conversations can continue outside of the room.

5pm: Wrap up and close

Finally, wrap up the meeting, draw it to a close and if you are going to meet again, put the date in the diary. Then go down the pub!

Tailoring the strategy agenda

As you’ve probably realized, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy meeting agenda that will suit every need. If you are starting from scratch and are using the time to write your strategy, you’ll need to put time aside for brainstorming new ideas, a presentation of market research analysis or feedback from customer focus groups.

If you are reviewing the projects that make up the strategy, you might bring each project manager in to present their project, before discussing as a team what initiatives need to be brought into the portfolio to ensure the strategic goals can be met.

The important thing is to always go back to the why: why are you meeting and what do you want to get out of the time? You can’t go wrong if you start there.

5 Considerations for a strategy planning workshop

So you’re ready to draw up that meeting agenda. Here’s what to consider before you get going.

1. Set the objective

I like to write the objective for any meeting at the top of the agenda. It helps focus people’s minds and keeps the conversation on track. Think about what you are meeting for and what the leadership teams are expecting to get out of it. Here are some examples:

• To define the 5-year growth plan for the organization
• To establish the projects we want to focus on to meet our strategic goals for the next 12 months
• To review the new products we intend to bring to market in the next 3 years
• To set the IT agenda for the next 24 months

You can hold strategic planning workshops for departments, teams or for the business overall. You can plan for the long term or adopt a rolling wave planning approach to plan ongoing. So which is it for you?

2. Let people know what is going to happen

Set expectations for the meeting. Let people know what contributions are expected from them. What do they need to prep in advance? Ask them for their agenda items – you might not include them as ‘real’ agenda items but it would help to know what talking points they intend to bring up.

Share any papers, timelines, business cases, strategy documents etc that make useful background reading. The more ready people are to contribute, the more you will get done during the meeting.

3. Prepare for conflict

As the meeting facilitator, you’ll have a good idea of the topics that will come up. And the potential flashpoints. For example, there are always conversations about budget. Doing anything strategic seems to cost a lot, and investing in one area means another area doesn’t get the investment.

Try to spot any sources of potential disputes in advance so you have pre-meeting conversations to manage expectations and ensure everyone comes to the session with an open mind (and the data to support their case). Healthy debates are to be encouraged!

Think about how to resolve conflict as a team if you can’t get to consensus. There are several group decision-making techniques you could try. In my experience, it’s often the most senior person in the room who makes the final call – strategy is not always a team game. It might not feel fair, but there are often political, economic, commercial and environmental reasons for decisions that might not always be clear to everyone in the room.

Whatever you think the outcome might be, have a few phrases to help facilitate the debate if it seems attendees are getting stuck. For example:

“Ultimately, it’s Fiona’s decision. Fiona, what do you want us to do?” “Let’s continue this conversation for another 10 minutes and if we aren’t able to reach a decision at that point, I suggest that Henry and Priya book some time to review and come back to us with a recommendation next week.” “IT are the guardians of that process. Do you agree to that approach?”

4. Prepare to go off script

I’ve been in strat planning meetings where we started with an agenda and then went totally off script… and the output was all the better for it. It’s great to have an agenda, and the template above gives you a starting point, but if it feels like the right thing to do is to delve into a particular area, then do it.

Strategy is too important to shortcut. If it feels like the meeting is taking longer, just say: “This feels like an important topic. Is everyone OK with staying with it for a little longer?” or “That isn’t something we were going to cover today but it sounds like it’s important that we get into it. Does everyone agree?”

Talk about what needs to be talked about. Strategy work takes time. The agenda is there as a guide but sometimes you just need to get it all out on the table.

5. Define success

What would a successful meeting look like? Sometimes it’s going to be OK to just talk and debate until you get to the heart of your strategy. Other times you might want to go all in on a brainstorming session and success will look like 20 new ideas.

It might be that you want to gain agreement on three new projects or prepare an update to go to the next board meeting. Think about what would constitute a successful outcome and try to guide people towards that.

Your next steps

• Agree the goals of your strategy meeting
• Write the agenda
• Socialize some of the ideas
• Adequately prepare for the session so you feel ready to facilitate it

In this article you learned what to include in your strategy planning meeting agenda and what considerations go into planning a successful strategy workshop. Don’t forget to grab a free action log template to record all the good stuff that comes out of your meeting. I hope it goes really well for you!

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Project manager, author, mentor

Elizabeth Harrin is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK. She holds degrees from the University of York and Roehampton University, and several project management certifications including APM PMQ. She first took her PRINCE2 Practitioner exam in 2004 and has worked extensively in project delivery for over 20 years. Elizabeth is also the founder of the Project Management Rebels community, a mentoring group for professionals. She's written several books for project managers including Managing Multiple Projects .

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• What is strategic planning? A 5-step gu ...

What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

How to build an organizational strategy

Get our free ebook and learn how to bridge the gap between mission, strategic goals, and work at your organization.

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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What is management by objectives (MBO)?

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How to hold a strategic planning meeting: A simple, step-by-step guide for facilitators

If you’re running or facilitating a strategic planning meeting, there are many factors to consider.

It’s much more than just bringing everyone together to have an open discussion — and it doesn’t just happen on its own, either.

There are several steps you can take to ensure that your strategic planning meeting runs smoothly, but it all starts with preparation.

Today, we’ll explore a few ideas to help you hold a successful session, starting with the basics.

Try Miro’s Strategic Planning Template

• What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is the process of analyzing a current situation within your organization and making sure it’s aligned with your specific objectives. If it isn’t, you and your team must develop a plan to “correct the path.”

So, why is strategic planning important?

In short, strategic planning helps you get from where you are today to the future you want. It’s a way of breaking down big, daunting goals into manageable steps that address your current situation and guide your work.

Here’s where strategic planning meetings come into play.

Meetings are the cornerstone of the strategic planning process.

These meetings are typically held by facilitators , but anyone can lead a strategic planning meeting.

We’ll provide you with specific instructions to hold a successful meeting a bit later, but first, let’s answer a crucial question.

What is the purpose of a strategic plan meeting?

Broadly speaking, a facilitator will use meetings to either:

• Gather specific information and feedback from team members, executives, and stakeholders.
• Help team members work together to solve problems, think strategically, and create new ideas to improve the organization.

These meetings aim to provide clarity in decision-making.

This is not a typical meeting where participants spend time reporting out. Strategy planning is all about brainstorming and collaboration .

This way, you can develop solutions to tangible problems in your organization and set the tone and strategic direction for your team.

Who needs to be included?

The best way to ensure that you get all of the most relevant voices in the room is to create an invite list.

Include people from each relevant department, if possible.

This way, you can cover a more complete spectrum of your company’s operations and activities.

You’ll want to include upper management, but don’t stop there.

Bring in members of the sales department, investor relations, human resources, and any other relevant departments or stakeholders.

You might also consider inviting people from outside of the organization who can provide a fresh perspective.

This is particularly useful for organizations that are doing business in a new market or have started offering new products.

• Best practices for running a successful strategic planning session

Now that you understand the importance of effective strategic planning meetings, the question becomes, how do you actually hold one?

Let’s cover a few of the best practices:

Build buy-in before the meeting starts

First, you’ll want to build buy-in with everyone involved.

Keep what you’re doing top-of-mind, whether that’s through casual conversations or company-wide memos.

In addition, make sure to have a clear agenda prepared, so everyone knows what they can expect out of the meeting. Start by defining the goal, then detail how you’ll get there.

Also, get all the materials you need together in advance.

That may look like coordinating with IT to make sure everyone has access to company software, sending out pertinent documents in advance, or mapping out who will be speaking at the meeting.

Make sure to communicate your expectations clearly so that everyone knows what is expected of them and why.

You’ll want to spend time in your planning stages to keep the tone positive, while at the same time being realistic about what’s possible.

Ultimately, your goal should be to align the team around a shared vision and mission so that you can move forward with a shared perspective.

Now, how can you communicate this agenda?

We suggest you use a centralized space where everyone can see your agenda.

For example, you can use Miro’s Agenda template to create and share your agenda with participants.

You can also use the template to keep notes during the meeting and add refinements later.

This way, everyone can see what’s been discussed and the next steps for moving forward.

Remember; this should be a collaborative effort, so consider asking for ideas from everyone about what they’d like to see covered.

Just don’t forget to actually take those ideas into consideration.

Develop a transparent strategic planning process

During the strategic process, you’re inviting employees to have meaningful discussions around the company’s vision statement, strategic goals, and strategic objectives.

It’s important to have a roadmap in place for how you will facilitate the process so that employees know what to expect.

Your meeting should be an open, engaging discussion with transparent dialog. During the meeting, everyone should get a turn to talk.

Make sure you have a clear process that allows everyone to participate and feel heard, no matter what their role is.

In the planning stage of a meeting, it’s important to have as much input as possible.

You can involve everyone by holding a virtual brainstorming session with this brainstorming template . Once you create a board, you can invite people to collaborate in real time.

This template helps you create a more engaging and collaborative session while allowing every person on the team to contribute their thoughts.

Create an agenda and stick to it

We all know what happens when an agenda is not set or adhered to.

Creating an agenda for your meeting helps you and your participants stay on track. This agenda should include topics, questions, milestones, and people.

Milestones are the larger topics that will be broken down into smaller questions, and these questions should flow to the ultimate goal of narrowing down your strategic priorities.

You can create milestones by putting together a list of discussion questions that will help your participants get on topic and help you check in with the group.

Your agenda might include an opening discussion, a brainstorming session on ideas, and a closing review of the next steps.

When developing your agenda:

• Keep it short: The last thing you want is your meeting to drag on for no good reason, so try to limit each agenda item to ten minutes or less. The whole meeting should only take an hour or two, at most.
• Be selective: Don’t include too many topics or ideas that will bog down your meeting.
• Create a contingency plan: You never know what might happen during your meeting, so always have a backup plan in case your agenda falls through.
• Plan for breaks: For longer meetings or workshops, set aside at least half an hour to take a break, such as during lunchtime.

Make it interactive

As much as possible, you’ll want to make this a collaborative effort, so it’s important to get everyone involved.

For example, you might want to break the group down into smaller sub-teams to brainstorm opportunities for new product features.

You could also task each group with creating a list of opportunities for particular departments within your company.

The point is that you’ll want to encourage open and honest dialog about challenges your company is facing and, where possible, break down any barriers that might stand in the way of progress.

Make sure to collaboratively create strategy documents, provide regular updates on progress, and discuss strategic issues in real time.

This way, you can work side-by-side to improve your performance, no matter where in the world your team members happen to be.

• How to run a strategic planning meeting in 7 steps

To get the most out of each session, you should prepare thoroughly — from the agenda to who you’ll involve and how.

Whether you’re holding a remote, hybrid, or in-person meeting, this process will help you out.

1. Define a clear outcome for the meeting

A strategic planning meeting can go totally off-the-rails if it’s held without a defined objective. That’s why the very first step is to define a clear, tangible goal for the meeting.

For example, your objective might be to better align social media with your marketing strategies .

In this case, your meeting might include a discussion on the purpose of social media, its role in the planning process, and how to better align your social media campaign with your organizational goals.

If your goal is to develop a new product , your meeting might look different.

Consider discussing who the target audience would be and how you can get in front of them. You could also discuss how the product should be positioned in the marketplace and what strategies you’ll use to get it there.

You can also set specific strategic planning meeting themes as part of your objectives, such as business growth or innovation.

The point is to be as specific as possible with your goal. That way, it’s easier for everyone to stay on task and make the right decisions.

2. Break the ice

A strategic planning meeting can be a big undertaking, so it’s important to break the ice by engaging participants in some friendly conversation.

You may want to ask participants what they think of the company’s latest direction or engage them in a fun icebreaker activity. You can also ask them what they think of the new business strategy and how they would implement it.

Or you could ask participants to complete an activity that allows them to interact with one another and develop a better understanding of each other’s unique skills.

For instance, you could assign participants to form teams, and then ask them to create a project plan to solve an issue the company might be experiencing.

You can also break the ice by having participants introduce themselves.

If you’re holding a remote or hybrid meeting, you could have participants discuss what they think in a private online chat room, or you could use an instant messaging program for the same purpose.

Make sure they feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas with each other before starting the main agenda.

The bottom line? The more connected the group is prior to the meeting, the more effective the meeting will be.

3. Set clear expectations

Once you know what you want out of the meeting, the next step is to communicate any expectations of participants, such as things they should prepare in advance of the meeting.

Here are some useful guidelines to keep in mind when you’re setting expectations:

• Provide details: The more detail you provide, the clearer it will be as to what’s required.
• Assign roles: Make sure everyone knows their role and responsibilities within the meeting audience.
• Use timelines: Use timelines to remind everyone of what needs to be completed before the meeting and send reminders if necessary.
• Communicate effectively : Encourage participants to talk with their teams about the fact strategy planning is happening. They may want to set up smaller meetings to gather input for the strategy planning workshop or to share the outputs after the meeting to give employees a chance to ask questions.

4. Set ground rules for behavior

Before the meeting starts, make sure everyone knows the rules.

This is especially important when working with external stakeholders.

For example, you might say something like:

“The goal of this meeting is to develop the strategic plan for the next quarter. We want to minimize distractions, so please don’t check your phone during the meeting.”

Another good idea is to let participants know how they’ll be evaluated. For example, if you’re trying to make progress on a project, you might say something like:

“Let’s try and reach a consensus on the first three points. If we can do that, we’ll consider the meeting a success.”

If you’re dealing with a remote or hybrid team, you should take the time to define online behavior standards. For instance, you could say something like:

“If you have a question, please type it in the chat window. Using outside chat programs is not permitted during the meeting.”

This way, you’ll have everyone invested in the outcome.

5. Identify potential challenges

Before the meeting starts, it’s always good to identify potential areas of conflict that might derail the process.

For example, what would happen if someone had to leave halfway through? Will the meeting continue without them, or will you reconvene once they’re back?

You should also consider how to handle difficult participants. Can you remove a difficult participant from the meeting before they hijack all of your time?

What happens if a disagreement comes up and it’s not resolved?

You should prepare for all these things in advance and have a plan ready if they do happen. For example, consider using a countdown timer for specific agenda items or presentations, so that time is allocated fairly.

If you identify potential challenges early on, you can keep an eye out for them as the meeting proceeds.

6. Encourage full participation

Remember that you’re asking people to spend time — and sometimes travel — to participate in your meeting.

It’s essential that everyone feels like they have the opportunity to participate. The best way to do this is by mentioning at the beginning of the meeting that you’d like everyone’s input throughout.

Make sure to keep an eye out for people who aren’t speaking up. If it seems like they may have something to contribute, ask them for their thoughts on the topic.

Also, make sure everyone knows that participation is critical. If you need to take a vote on something, remind people what the vote is about and why it matters.

Finally, make sure you’re speaking in terms that everyone in the room can understand. If there are people who are new to the organization, spend a moment explaining any acronyms you use.

This will allow everyone to feel like they can give their input with ease, leading to a more successful meeting.

7. Use visuals and brainstorming tools to communicate ideas

Having everyone on the same page is critical, even if they can’t be in the same room.

Here’s where visuals and collaboration platforms come in handy.

Using collaborative tools, like our brainstorming templates helps you organize work and removes some of the stress of coming up with ideas on the spot.

It also encourages people to provide input and makes them feel like they have a stake in the outcome.

For instance, you can use Miro’s Reverse Brainstorming template to come up with innovative ideas and display them in real time. You can save the meeting content on the board too, so you can send it to participants after the meeting.

This can be especially useful if you have multiple participants in different locations involved at the same time. They may not be able to physically attend the meeting, but they can still provide valuable input.

Also, we provide you with a fully customizable strategic plan template .

You can adapt this template to fit your exact business needs and standardize your meetings with ease.

• Sample agenda for a strategic planning meeting

You need to make sure your strategic planning meeting agenda is detailed and thorough enough to keep you on task.

Start with an overview of what you’ll be discussing, then move into individual department updates. This is where you highlight progress against targets.

Finally, spend some time outlining your organizational goals moving forward and, of course, always leave time for questions.

To help you better understand what a strategy planning session might look like in the real world, here’s a sample agenda:

• 10am–11am: Welcome and meeting goals
• 11am–12pm: Leadership team updates
• 12pm–1pm: Department updates
• 1pm–2pm: Lunch break
• 2pm–3pm: Analyze challenges and problems
• 3pm–4pm: Ideate solutions
• 4pm–5pm: Discuss and gain consensus on solutions and goals
• 5pm–6pm: Assign tasks and responsibilities for strategy execution
• 6pm–7pm: Q&A
• It all comes down to solid preparation and visuals

The best way to ensure your meeting runs smoothly and effectively is to prepare it with anticipation. By creating a clear agenda, you’re able to get the most out of your session.

Also, the use of visuals and brainstorming tools helps you collaborate with your team and communicate your critical points more effectively.

You can hold your planning meetings in a more visual way by creating a board and sharing with your team.

Also, you can use the strategic planning meeting template to get started with fewer headaches.

Want an action-oriented framework to help your team continuously improve?

Try the strategic planning template, miro is your team's visual platform to connect, collaborate, and create — together..

Join millions of users that collaborate from all over the planet using Miro.

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Sample strategic planning agenda 2023 strategic planning process UPDATED

By Anthony Taylor - March 29, 2023

Strategic planning Agenda for your next strategy meeting.

We've been leading strategic planning meetings for the past 12 years (and counting), and we've tested dozens of different strategic planning agendas so that you don't have to. Use our experience to have the best and most effective strategic planning process. 

Need a strategic planning facilitator so you can participate in an unbiased strategic planning process? Contact us today or learn more about your facilitation options:

Free resources to support your strategic planning. 

Download these tools to complement your strategic planning agenda. 

• Strategic planning template
• Alignment Scorecard: Measure your team's alignment
• 15 questions to ask your team before strategic planning . 

What is a good strategic planning process?

• Tips to prepare for a strategic planning meeting
• Recommended Pre-Work Agenda & Timeline
• One Day strategic planning meeting agenda
• Two Day strategic planning meeting agenda
• Three day strategic planning meeting agenda

Virtual strategic planning meeting agenda

A good strategic planning process will help your team get clear and aligned on a few key areas:

• Where are we now?
• Where are we going?
• What's going to get in the way?
• How are we going to implement the plan/what do we need to do? 

If you're leading a strategic planning process with a team, getting alignment is critical. 

If you don't have a good process, you'll likely go on many tangents, "get stuck in the weeds" of the details, and not end up with a clear direction. 

A good strategic planning process needs a balance of outcomes and actions to help you reach your vision, or One Destination. 

With too many actions, you'll be busy working on a lot of tasks but might not be working in the right direction or towards shared outcomes. 

Without any actions, it means that your team will get stuck on determining "what's next" and your plan will take a much longer time to implement, or worse, not get implemented at all.

How to have a successful strategic planning meeting

After having led hundreds of strategy meetings both online and virtually (and all over the world) here are some things to consider prior to developing your agenda to ensure you have a good strategy meeting/offsite and overall strategic planning process:

Leverage Pre-work so the time you spend in the strategy meeting are used optimally. Don't present documents or research that could have been done in advance. Use the time to have discussions, and make important choices.

Have high-quality food and snacks, including breakfast with protein. Strategic planning is an incredibly taxing process for the brain and requires lots of calories. You don't want your group hitting a mid-afternoon lull when the most important work of the day is still underway. Have a good breakfast, good snacks, and high-quality meals. Avoid carb-heavy meals so people don't have a sugar crash, and save any alcohol for the end of the day after your planning session is complete. 

Go offsite if possible: When we've done sessions at people's offices, they get interrupted with day-to-day issues and takes away their ability to get outside of the day-to-day. I've also found that people are slightly more reserved because they don't want staff to know what's going on until the whole strategic planning process is complete. You'll find that while there is an additional cost to going offsite, you'll get better engagement from participants of the strategy meeting. 

Use a facilitator: If you don't have a facilitator, you are the facilitator. This means that if you're the CEO or head of HR, you're going to have a really hard time balancing the hat of facilitator, and your own role. You won't be able to participate fully if you're facilitating. Furthermore, your participants will have a harder time being honest and transparent with a facilitator who already has a bias one way or the other. 

Think strategically: People love get to get into the how/actions before fully clarifying the what and why (Mission/Vision). The result is that you'll get into rabbit holes, you'll digress, and people will get frustrated. Focus on your highest-level strategic outcomes and work your way to the actions, not the other way around. 

Wear the group hat: Strategic planning meetings get easily derailed when individual participants focus on their own needs/desires ahead of those of the group. Ask everyone to come to the meeting "wearing their organization hat" not their individual role hat. It's not a problem they advocate for their own role, but it's a group session first and foremost. 

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Recommended pre-work agenda & timeline: .

Pre-work serves two purposes: one, to make sure that your people are prepared for the upcoming strategic planning sessions so that you can make the most of your time, and two, to help align and engage participants (and stakeholders) early on in the planning process. 

One day strategic planning meeting agenda

This one-day planning agenda is great for a small company or non-profit that needs a refresher on the organization's direction.

If you want to make the most of your limited time for strategic planning, learn more about using a strategic planning facilitator for your session. 

Before sharing the agenda, we want to note that we no longer facilitate or offer to facilitate one-day strategic planning meetings. 

Most notably, because as an external team we could not accomplish full alignment or create a complete enough strategic plan with only a one-day agenda. 

If you are leading this process internally, and you’ve been able to successfully pull stakeholders into the process prior to this one-day meeting.

And/or you will have subsequent strategy meetings at a later date to complete the strategic planning process fully. This one-day meeting is the first of many strategic planning sessions, then please use the agenda below. 

If your only option is to have a one day strategy meeting, it’s better than no meeting.

We would not advise any of our clients to only have a one-day strategic planning meeting and expect to have full clarity or alignment with your current state, vision, mission, values, priorities, goals and actions within an 8-hour day. It’s jut not realistic.

That said, If all the pre-work was done we’d focus on the core conversations needed for alignment. 

“To maximize your time, make sure to get your team involved prior to your one-day strategy meeting. Our free strategic planning questionnaire offers the key questions to help start you r strategic planning process ”

• Vision: Where are we going? Watch : How to Start the Vision Planning Process
• Mission/purpose: Why do we exist? Who is the customer we serve?
• Strategic Priorities: What do we need to focus on to achieve our Vision? Watch : How to Set Strategic Priorities
• Action planning for the strategic priorities

A few things to note:

This one-day planning session is possible if you have a small team of six or less people. If you have more people, then you will likely need more time to work through the complete process. 

The survey is a survey we run with our clients to help them get in the right mindset, and ask the key questions before the session happens to cut down on some of the discussion.

Strategic priorities, KPI's and the biggest priority all roll in together, but are separated because it leaves fluidity for ample conversation and adapting the  agenda.

Two -Day Strategic Planning Session (Most common + Recommended) 

We recommend two full days for most organizations.

The reason we don't believe an organization of the above size should use a shorter agenda for their strategy meeting is that there are too many essential conversations that need to be had.

At that size, your organization needs to be fully aligned from top down and bottom up, and should consider more fully the internal and external environment, current challenges and risks, and align the plan to your long-term vision, mission and values.

That alignment takes time, but it's needed because it will serve as a guide for the other members of the team that aren't participating in the strategic planning session. 

Here's a graphic representation of the strategic planning agenda. 

DAY 1: 9:00 am-5:30 pm

Day 2: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Three-day strategic planning meeting agenda

If you have 3 days for strategic planning, we still use the two-day agenda as the foundation, but we add a couple of key conversations that vary depending on the organization.

That said, the 3rd day is always focused on execution. 

We typically break up the day into 90-minute alignment areas for problem-solving and alignment. 

We also use the time to dig deeper into action plans.

For example:

After going through the strategic planning process over 3 days, your team should be aligned and clear on the most important parts of your strategic plan. 

As you implement your plan, there will certainly be issues that arise where you need to discuss again and re-align. 

In addition to facilitating strategic planning sessions, we also support strategic plan implementation through coaching, accountability and training. 

Learn more about our how our strategic planning consultants can help you with the implementation of your strategic plan.

While the first phase of in-person offsite facilitation is usually completed in two 8-hr working days, we recommend splitting this up online to optimize engagement and to reduce screen fatigue. We recommend holding 5 x 3hr sessions, roughly one week apart. This allows enough time to take a deep dive into the work each session, with space for creative thinking, reflection and any homework between each session. 

For example:  

• While we recommend holding virtual sessions one week apart to allow for information digestion and homework time, you may wish to hold the sessions closer together or further apart, depending on your organizational needs
• While we recommend 3-hour sessions because it’s long enough to dive into the deep work, and short enough to hold attention spans, you may wish to have shorter or longer sessions, depending on scheduling needs for your team (ex: 6x 2.5hr sessions, or 4x 4hr sessions)

Tools & Resources to Enhance Participation & Engagement 

In addition to our agenda, we utilize several tools and resources to help enhance participation and engagement within virtual strategy meetings. 

While there are abundant options to consider, some of our favourites include:

• Zoom – This is a great platform to host strategy meetings as it allows the facilitator to see multiple participants at once in a grid view, to share their screen, utilize breakout rooms for small group discussions, to incorporate polling, text chat, and other functionalities
• Liberating Structures – These are techniques and activities to help boost engagement and inclusion within group meetings and are considered a best practice within adult learning
• Mentimeter – This platform allows meeting hosts to poll participants, generate group word clouds, and obtain real-time data from multiple participants at once
• PPT Presentations – It’s a good practice for the strategy facilitator to have a PPT slide deck to help guide the discussions and to provide visual feedback to participants via screen sharing. This will allow participants to both see and hear any key instructions for activities throughout the session. 

Post-work Once you’ve completed your strategic planning process, the planning work is not over. It’s important to make sure that prior implementation that you’ve:

• Solidified your priorities and defined SMART goals  
• Documented your plan in a digestible way (ex:. a PPT presentation or PDF)
• Developed a communication plan to share and cascade your strategy throughout your organization 
• Booked a time with your strategy leadership team to create your implementation plan 
• Set up a system to track and monitor your progress

If you want to learn to how to facilitate a strategic planning session, you can check out our strategic planning course where we'll walk you through each step of this agenda to help you achieve alignment with your team. 

If you read this article and you don't want to lead the process yourself, you might want to check out how our strategic planning services can help you get  alignment and clarity with your team. 

Bonus: you get to participate instead of leading the process. Learn more about the eight main benefits of using a strategic planning facilitator for your strategy meeting. 

Want to participate in the meeting instead of having to lead it yourself?

Use a facilitator to keep the meeting focused, on track, and get your team aligned. 

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How to Run a Strategic Planning Meeting (Strategy Definition)

• How to Run a Strategic...

Description of the Template and Guide

This meeting agenda template is part of a strategic planning process designed specifically for use with remote participants. This process walks remote teams through creation of the core elements of a strategic plan: vision, mission, values, goals and strategies, resulting in what we call The Essential Strategic Plan.

If you’ve set organizational goals, the next step is to create strategies for achieving each goal. Where goals define what, strategies define how. This meeting maps out a process for setting goal-aligned strategies in about two hours.

During this meeting, you'll lead the group through a brainstorm on strategies for achieving your organizational goals. Then, you'll evaluate these strategies by impact and feasibility, and select a draft set for inclusion in the strategic plan.

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Project Management

16 meeting agenda examples & free templates.

Evan Gerdisch

Content Strategist

March 25, 2024

We’ve all been a part of team meetings where most participants are clueless about the purpose of the meeting, and the speakers steer the discussion off-track. 

What follows is a true catastrophe. 

You’d find your team clocking in many unproductive hours because of the ‘said meeting’ without achieving any objective.

Good news! 

A meeting agenda can help you avoid this and be the answer to all your woes. ✌

An effective meeting agenda is a plan you share with your meeting participants. It’ll help your team set clear expectations of what needs to happen before, during, and after the meeting. 

In this article, we’ll discuss what a meeting agenda is and learn the five key steps involved in writing one. We’ll also look at 16 meeting agenda template options and explore the reasons why your entire team needs a meeting agenda. 

Benefits of an Effective Meeting Agenda

How to write a meeting agenda 5 key steps, how to use ai for meeting agendas, team meeting agenda examples, 1. weekly 1-on-1 meeting agenda template by clickup, 2. all hands team meeting agenda template by clickup, 3. scrum meeting agenda template by clickup, 4. meeting notes agenda template by clickup, 5. project post mortem template by clickup, 6. meeting minutes template by clickup, 7. sprint retrospective brainstorm meeting template by clickup, 8. team meeting agenda template by meeting booster, 9. board meeting agenda template by template lab, 10. project kickoff meeting agenda template by docket, 11. meeting dashboard template by clickup, 12. brainstorm meeting agenda template by owl labs, 13. board of directors meeting minutes template by clickup, 14. hr meeting agenda template by where, 15. marketing meeting agenda template by hugo, 16. project management meeting agenda template by hypercontext, who benefits from using a meeting agenda, cross-off stress from your work life with team meeting agendas.

If you’re more of a visual learner check out this vlog on meeting agendas!

Let’s get started.

Sitting through a meeting that doesn’t have an agenda is pretty similar to setting out on a treasure hunt without a map. 

A meeting agenda allows your team to set the meeting’s cadence , prepare for the meeting topic, ensure that everyone is on the same page, and keep them on track to hit their objectives. 

Meeting agendas:

• Give the meeting a clear purpose
• Help you stay on track
• Help define responsibilities

It consists of a list of topics, action items , and activities you want to discuss during the meeting. 

A simple meeting agenda could be a short bulleted list. More detailed agendas include descriptions for each agenda item, reference material, and expected outcomes for each discussion topic. 

Formal agendas also include timing and presenter information for each agenda item.

An example of a formal agenda can be a city council agenda used in a state’s city council meeting. These agendas can have an open forum section that makes time for public comment. 

But formal meeting agendas aren’t restricted to the government. 

You can use them in your company’s meetings too. You just have to choose the agenda that suits your team the best . 

Now that you know what a meeting agenda is, let’s look at how you can write one. ✍

Here are the five easy steps you can follow to create the right meeting agenda for your team:

1. Establish the meeting type

Not informing your team about the type of meeting they’d be attending can cause a lot of confusion. 

Imagine a team member attending a regular meeting only to find out that it’s their performance review . 

The horror! 😱

To avoid catching people off-guard, make sure you all know what the meeting is about.

Meetings can be of several different types, including:

• Team meeting: also referred to as a staff meeting, these are opportunities for your team to discuss various business aspects
• Board meeting: a formal meeting among your organization’s board of directors. They’re generally held at regular intervals to review team performances and policy issues
• Executive session: held by board members regularly before their routine board meetings
• Recurring meeting: daily, weekly, or monthly meetings that repeat regularly
• Project kickoff meeting : conducted at the beginning of every new project to inform the team about project objectives, deliverables, and timelines
• Brainstorming meeting: used to flesh out a new idea with your teams in a conducive brainstorming session
• Feedback meeting: hosted to gather constructive feedback from your team regarding new projects and processes
• Agile meeting : a special meeting used to hold hyper-focused discussions for agile teams to conduct sprint reviews, share valuable project information, customer feedback, project updates, etc.
• Scrum meeting: uses a scrum meeting agenda that may include sprint planning, daily standups, product backlog refinement, sprint reviews, etc.
• Retrospective meeting: held after project completion to discuss what went well and what didn’t
• Onboarding meeting : help new hires understand professional expectations in their work environment
• Committee meetings: help a subgroup of team members from your company form a committee to achieve any special function. 

2. State the objective of the meeting

What are the top reasons you’re having a meeting with your team? 

Do you want to update them about a project? Do you want their insights on something? 

Clearly stating the meeting objective gives your team a heads-up on what’s coming their way. At the very least, they’ll know whether to bring a project report or a beer to the meeting.

3. Identify specific meeting topics

Once you have a clear meeting goal, make a list of discussion topics you want your team to cover.

We’re going to let you in on our secret to make your meetings more engaging.

Make sure to pick discussion topics that affect everyone in the meeting. 

This way, you’ll have all your team members willing to participate in the discourse. 

Related: Our remote guide to Virtual Meeting Etiquette !

4. Allocate time to discuss each topic

Meetings are expensive and can be difficult to organize. They’re only productive when they can utilize time effectively. 

That’s why it’s important to allocate a certain amount of time to discuss each meeting topic. And you won’t end up straying and spending all your available time on a single topic. 

Using a consent agenda is another time-saving trick for your meetings. A consent agenda groups recurring discussion topics into a single agenda item that you can easily cross-off. 

These measures will make sure your meetings don’t become a time-suck and a calendar clogger. 👀

5. Include a list of necessary documents

Let’s say you hold a meeting with your project stakeholders . 

One way to make the meeting more productive is to share all project documents through your team meeting agendas ahead of the meeting. 

Think of this as one of the pre-reading activities your teacher would ask you to do back in school. 🤓 This practice sets the right context for every participant in the meeting and empowers them to contribute to the discourse. 

Now that you know what to do, let’s look at some meeting agenda examples to help you see what these steps look like in action. 

Bonus: Conference agenda templates !

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can significantly streamline meeting management, turning every gathering into an efficient and productive experience. By integrating AI with project management tools like ClickUp Brain , teams can leverage automation to handle routine tasks and enhance meeting productivity. Here’s how AI can assist:

• AI-powered Meeting Agendas : ClickUp’s AI capabilities can draft personalized meeting agendas based on the participants’ roles, previous meeting notes, and ongoing project demands. By analyzing prior meeting notes and objectives, AI can help ensure that each meeting covers all critical points without missing a beat.
• Smart Summarization : Post-meeting, AI can condense hours of discussion notes into succinct, actionable summaries. This feature enables participants to swiftly get the gist of the meeting and review any points they may have missed, ensuring everyone is aligned and informed.
• Instant Action Items Creation : ClickUp AI can identify potential tasks from your notes and automatically create action items in ClickUp. This seamless transition from discussion to execution means that follow-ups are clear, time-bound, and less likely to be overlooked or forgotten.

Embedding AI in your meeting processes not only saves time but also enhances the quality of your meetings. It helps to maintain focus, track progress against objectives, and foster a culture of accountability by automating routine yet crucial aspects of meeting management.

Here’s a couple simple meeting agenda example for your reference:

Design Team Meeting

Date: 02/07/24

Time: 09:00 am – 09:45 am

Meeting Participants: @SpongeBob, @Patrick, @Mr.Krabs, @Squidward

Meeting’s Purpose:

• Develop a new website page for product testimonials

a. Before the meeting:

• Every attendee must review the document on product testimonials

b. Discussion topics:

• Review product testimonials document (10 min)
• Discuss the content you want to include on the web page (10 min, @Name)
• Present sample designs for the web page (15 min, @Name)
• Share suggestions and vote on the website design (10 min)

c. Action items:

• Create a timeline for design deliverables – @SpongeBob
• Share first cut of the web page design – @Patrick
• Schedule and make an itinerary for a second meeting to finalize design – @Mr.Krabs

Sales Team Weekly Review Meeting

Date: 04/14/24

Time: 02:00 pm – 02:45 pm

Meeting Participants: @Alice, @Bob, @Charlie, @Dana

• Evaluate weekly sales performance and discuss strategies for improvement
• Each participant should update the CRM with the latest sales data
• Review weekly sales figures and trends (15 min)
• Discuss obstacles in the sales pipeline and solutions (10 min, @Alice)
• Brainstorm strategies for upcoming sales campaign (10 min, @Bob)
• Set goals for the next week (10 min)
• Compile a report of weekly sales metrics – @Charlie
• Draft a preliminary plan for the sales campaign – @Dana
• Organize a training session on new sales software – @Alice

HR Monthly Planning Meeting

Date: 04/21/24

Time: 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Meeting Participants: @Emma, @Liam, @Noah, @Olivia

• Plan HR activities for the next month and update on current employee initiatives
• Review employee feedback from the previous month
• Analyze employee satisfaction survey results (20 min)
• Update on the status of current recruiting efforts (15 min, @Emma)
• Plan employee engagement activities for the next month (15 min, @Noah)
• Discuss updates to HR policies (10 min)
• Implement changes based on employee feedback – @Liam
• Finalize recruitment schedule and process – @Olivia
• Prepare the schedule for upcoming engagement activities – @Emma

These samples should give you an idea of how you want to design your meeting agenda. To help you further, let’s look at some meeting agenda templates from the most popular online meeting tools .

16 Team Meeting Agenda Templates

Here are 16 meeting agenda templates that you can use to create your next agenda:

One-on-one meetings are your chance to connect and align with the people you manage in the most effective way possible. ClickUp’s 1:1 meeting template keeps all of your agendas—tailored for each individual—in one organized place.

ClickUp’s all-hands meeting template helps to keep communication open across the company, and ensures everyone is aligned and up to speed with individual and group goals. All hands meetings give room to share information from updates to announcements about future agendas and encourage collaboration and alignment throughout the team.

This scrum meeting agenda template by ClickUp will make daily meetings a breeze. Daily status meetings about tasks for projects help to ensure that a team is aware of the progress on their front.

ClickUp’s meeting note-style agenda template is the perfect place to keep all event meeting notes, key takeaways and action items.

Projects don’t always go to plan. Use this project post-mortem template by ClickUp to set new goals and keep your team heading in the right direction.

This collaborative meeting minutes template is a ClickUp Doc designed to provide the perfect outline for a successful meeting summation.

ClickUp’s Meeting Minutes Template  includes pre-built pages for organizing teams, individual meeting notes , and instructions for getting the most out of your meeting with this template!

Turn your meeting notes into a newsletter with newsletter templates !

Save time and gain valuable insights with this simple Sprint Retrospective Template . Whether you are running an agile team meeting or a project management meeting, this template will help you build a crystal-clear picture of what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what to change moving forward.

The main objective of team meetings is to share important information with team members, align on goals, and call out any blockers. This team meeting agenda template helps the team stay focused on the goals of the meeting.

Board meetings tend to run over time. Use a schedule template for your next board meeting using this board meeting agenda to stay on track and finish your meeting on time.

It’s important to set the tone for a new project from the start. Use this project kickoff meeting agenda template to facilitate a successful project launch!

Use this ClickUp meeting dashboard template as an agenda for your next meeting. This template makes it easy to see the status of different tasks during a meeting.

This creative brainstorming meeting agenda is a great way to keep your brainstorming meetings on track from week to week. This template makes it easy to run your meeting and stay focused on brainstorming.

Create structure with this ClickUp Board of Directors Meeting Minutes Template . Record and tag your attendees, organize agenda action items, and take detailed notes for each agenda.

HR departments have a lot to keep track of. This HR meeting agenda template will give your HR team a way to come together for a productive meeting that isn’t complicated or stressful.

Use this marketing meeting agenda to bring your marketing department together to celebrate wins, align on goals, and identify project blockers.

This project management meeting agenda template will help you identify objectives, risks, and deadlines for your next team project.

When it comes to planning a meeting, creating a thorough and well-organized agenda is crucial for ensuring that the meeting runs smoothly and achieves its objectives. Here are some of the key beneficiaries of using a meeting agenda:

• Project Managers: Project managers often have to lead team meetings and having a well-planned agenda helps them to stay on track, cover all necessary topics, and keep the meeting focused.
• Project Status Meeting Agenda
• Project Coordinators Meeting Agenda
• Lessons Learned Meeting Agenda
• Post Mortem Meeting Agenda
• Leadership Teams: Meeting agendas are also beneficial for leadership teams, such as executive boards or management teams. They can help to ensure that important topics are discussed, decisions are made efficiently, and everyone is on the same page with regards to company goals and strategies.
• Leadership Offsite Meeting Agenda
• Executive Leadership Meeting Agenda
• Board of Trustees Meeting Agenda
• Executives Meeting Agenda

An effective meeting agenda will make team collaboration seem like a cakewalk. 

And when collaboration becomes easy, your team can focus on amping up their productivity and getting their creative juices flowing. 

With the help of a project management tool like ClickUp, writing effective meeting agendas and managing meetings are easier than ever!

ClickUp lets you document every meeting, manage agendas, take down effective meeting minutes , assign comments to your team, and so much more.  

Ready to watch your team ace teamwork and hit all their objectives? 

Get ClickUp for free today and say goodbye to meeting disasters. 👋

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How to Design an Agenda for an Effective Meeting

• Roger Schwarz

A tool to waste less of your time.

To prevent holding a meeting in which participants are unprepared, veer off track, or waste the team’s time, you should create an effective meeting agenda that sets clear expectations for what needs to occur before and during the meeting. Seek input from your team members to ensure the agenda reflects their needs and keeps them engaged. If your entire team is meeting, then the issues discussed should affect everyone present and require the whole team’s effort to solve. Addressing topics that don’t impact everyone at the meeting wastes individuals’ valuable time. Another tactic for creating a better meeting agenda is listing topics as questions to be answered. Instead of writing “office space reallocation,” try “Under what conditions should we reallocate office space?” Let your team know if the purpose of the discussion is to share information, seek input on a decision, or make a decision. And indicate on the agenda who is leading each discussion so that they can prepare. These tips, and five others, will help your team stay focused in meetings.

We’ve all been in meetings where participants are unprepared, people veer off track, and the topics discussed are a waste of the team’s time. These problems — and others like them — stem from poor agenda design. An effective agenda sets clear expectations for what needs to occur before and during a meeting. It helps team members prepare, allocates time wisely, quickly gets everyone on the same topic, and identifies when the discussion is complete. If problems still occur during the meeting, a well-designed agenda increases the team’s ability to effectively and quickly address them.

• Roger Schwarz is an organizational psychologist, speaker, leadership team consultant, and president and CEO of Roger Schwarz & Associates . He is the author of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck to Get Results . LeadSmarter

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How to Conduct a Monthly Business Plan Review Meeting

Posted june 21, 2021 by noah parsons.

Most people think that meetings are a waste of time. They’re right.

The fact is, too many meetings are run poorly, have no real objective, and waste employees’ time — which kills productivity.

I absolutely encourage you to be ruthless in your pursuit of fewer and more efficient meetings. There’s tons of advice out there on how to run better meetings and cut down on useless touch bases that waste time and make your organization move slower.

For example, here at Palo Alto Software , we’ve found one meeting that is simply indispensable. It only takes an hour each month, keeps the management team up to speed on everything that’s going on in the company, and helps us plan and manage in a quick and effective way .

This meeting is our monthly plan review meeting. 

What is a plan review meeting?

A monthly review meeting is a time for you and your team to review current progress against your ideal performance. This one-to-two-hour meeting should be spent dissecting parts of your strategy, reviewing financials, and making adjustments based on overall performance. It has been a fixture of our management strategy for years and is simply one of the most effective ways for us to continue to grow the company and adjust our course as necessary.

For us, business planning isn’t just a one-time or annual event. Instead, it’s an ongoing process where we are constantly reviewing and adjusting course as necessary while ensuring that we’re staying on track toward our larger goals .

Why is it important to conduct a monthly plan review?

Every business of any size can benefit from a calculated time to stop, review and revise. When done correctly, this meeting can help you focus on what’s vital for your company, identify what data you need to accurately measure it and how to best present and review these results. Additionally, your monthly plan review process can help your business in the following ways.

Commits your business to learn and act

It can become very easy to let operations and processes become stagnant and standard. Without a regular performance review, any potential problems may remain to fester well beyond when they are first identified. You don’t want to waste company time and resources on things that are ineffective, but it’s difficult to change course without first processing it.

By setting aside this monthly time, it provides the opportunity to commit to learning and adjusting anything and everything. This isn’t based on off-hand information but on solid information and data that helps you identify and evaluate what’s most important for your business. 

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Engages individuals across your entire business

Depending on how you present this meeting, it has the potential to pull in greater insight from across your business. Whether you’re sharing information company-wide or sticking with select leaders from each department, it immediately expands the scope of expertise. 

The more that every leader and employee knows what’s going on with everyone else, the better you can align and produce effective goals . It also provides the opportunity to identify potential solutions or issues from outside your core team’s responsibilities. Maybe your product team sees a potential gap in your marketing messaging. Or someone in HR sees a potential work/life balance misalignment in the sales team. None of this would come to life without a core review meeting like this.

Influences better business conversations

Engaging more people across your business and providing more detailed information typically leads to more fruitful conversations outside the core meeting. Yes, the meeting itself is vital for actively reviewing and adjusting your strategy at the moment. However, this information being top of mind means that potential issues or innovations will be dealt with outside of the planning meeting. This is due to your employees having a clear direction to reference in the day-to-day. They know the strategy and data are up-to-date and that it serves as a north star for their own projects and initiatives.

How to run an effective monthly plan review meeting

We treat planning not as a document, but as a management tool that helps guide decisions and strategy. It’s this mindset that helps our team run these monthly meetings successfully. We have a strategy in place, steps to walk through and key objectives we expect to find.

Here’s a quick overview of how we structure our monthly plan review meetings and what’s worked well for us over the years. 

1. Review your financial statements

We always start with the numbers first . How did we do last month compared to our forecast ? How did we do compared to the same month last year? What does our year-to-date performance look like?

What financial statements to review

Ideally, you’ll have the opportunity to review all relevant monthly financial statements. At a minimum, you should review your Profit and Loss Statement , Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement . These will provide a high-level overview of your financial position and help identify any obvious anomalies. If possible, it’s valuable to look at these all together through a business dashboard , that way you can immediately start making connections.

With that top-level exploration in mind, you can then start looking into your budget, financial forecast scenarios, and any specific elements that may seem relevant. This may include things like your expense categories, accounts receivable/payable payment schedules, etc. 

Look beyond top-line performance

We always spend time drilling into the numbers, beyond the top-line revenue and expenses to better understand what the drivers were behind our performance. Did all product lines perform well? Or did some underperform? Did we spend as planned or were there some areas that we overspent in?

Most importantly, we review our cash position and cash flow . Did we collect money as planned? What does our cash flow forecast look like for the next few months?

There are benefits to looking at financials together

While financial reports can be reviewed outside of a meeting, reviewing them together as a team encourages questions and discussion around our revenue and spending. It also helps you uncover specific issues or opportunities that you may miss on your own. And of course, gives everyone a voice to determine the next steps for the company as well as their specific teams.

Of course, we use LivePlan to review our numbers because it’s much easier than drilling through exported reports from QuickBooks . But if you’re not ready to make that jump, you can always start out with a simple cash flow template in Excel.

2. Reevaluate your milestones

Once we review our financial performance, we review our “ major milestones ”—the big tasks we had hoped to get done in the past month and our plans for the next month.

We discuss how various teams might be working with each other on different projects and talk about the specific milestones that we have planned. Are these still the tactics that we want to work on that will help achieve our goals? Do we need to shift priorities? Is there new learning and information that would have us change our schedule?

By reviewing major initiatives on a monthly basis, we can stay agile and make changes as needed. That’s also why we review them after parsing through our financials, to determine if our current milestones should still be a priority. As we learn more about our customers and our market , we might shift strategies and develop new milestones .

3. Review your long-term goals and strategy

Next, we review our long-term strategic goals. While this doesn’t change too often in our situation as an established company, new startups might shift their strategy frequently as they search for a business model that works.

For those early-stage startups, this step of the meeting may be the most important step and often takes the longest. For more established companies, this part of the meeting might typically only take a few minutes. This is where having a brief and functional business plan can really help speed up the process.

Instead of delving deep into a 40-page business plan document to review our strategy, we review our our one-page business plan (in LivePlan, it’s called the Pitch ). It covers our company identity, the core problem we solve for our customers, our solution, competition , and sales and marketing strategy . It’s all on one page so it’s easy to read, review, and change quickly .

4. Provide time to discuss any company issues

Finally, anyone on the team can bring forward any issues that they want to discuss. This could include new opportunities to consider, prioritization of product features, potential partnerships, or internal HR issues.

Everything is fair game and we try to come up with resolutions and next steps for any issue that’s brought up.

We’ve found that this type of open-ended discussion really helps generate new ideas and brings different perspectives from managers of different teams.

5. Set meeting guidelines

I believe that all companies would benefit from a monthly review of their business. These types of meetings keep everyone on the same page, help share information about progress, and turn planning into a tool that helps teams make informed decisions. 

But in order to run these monthly meetings successfully, you’ll need to do some preliminary work to keep you and your team on track. Here are three tips to successfully establish your monthly business plan review.

Put the meeting on the calendar

It’s important to make it a formal event that’s on the schedule. It can’t be optional and it has to be at a regular time so that everyone always knows when the meeting is.

For us, we started out with the meeting on the 3rd Thursday of every month. As our bookkeeping and accounting processes have become more efficient, we’ve been able to move our meeting to the 2nd Friday of the month.

Follow a repeatable agenda

While different topics will come up for discussion, it’s important that your plan review meeting has a repeatable agenda. Not only does it provide structure, but it gives your team specific action items to review beforehand.

That means making sure that you have your numbers ready for review and that your team has updates on their goals. Try to set time limits for each section if you can, and overestimate the length of the meeting with the full intention of finishing earlier than planned. This part will be a continuous work in progress and you and your team will gradually improve your efficiency with each subsequent meeting.

Be prepared to change the plan

These plan review meetings aren’t just about staying the course and blindly following the plan. Instead, they are about adjusting the plan. Perhaps you’ll discover that you should be investing more in marketing, or that you’re going to be able to expand and hire faster than you originally planned.

The plan review meeting is about making adjustments to your goals and strategies based on what you’ve discovered in the past month.

Use your monthly plan review to redefine how you do meetings

Keep in mind that running your meetings more successfully won’t just happen overnight. It takes time to develop a structure that works best for you and your team. As I outlined in this article, the best place to start your meeting restructure is with your monthly plan review meeting.

It’s a necessary review that can be consistently repeated, refined, and adjusted, which makes it the perfect testing ground for a new system. 

Editors’ Note: This article was originally written in 2018 and updated for 2021.

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Noah Parsons

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Planning Meeting Agenda for 2024: Conduct an Effective Planning Session

By Jessica Wishart

Annual & Quarterly Planning

No pressure, right?  To make sure that you have an effective strategic planning session make sure that you state the purpose of the meeting to team members several weeks prior to the annual planning meeting so that they can prepare for the meeting and bring up any agenda items they want to discuss.  (Bonus Tip - Don't forget to book the conference room and announce the meeting time!)  Don't worry we have perfected the strategic planning process needed while building over a hundred thousand plans for our customers over the last two decades, and helping them achieve their goals with Rhythm Strategic Planning Software.

The key to having a great yearly planning meeting is to being prepared, determine the right annual planning meeting agenda, and follow a process to ensure that you get the maximum value out of the investment you’re making in annual planning. Successful meetings require that everyone come prepared as being prepared will save you time when working with your team in the session itself and allow you to focus on the important agenda items. Our consultants have worked with hundreds of companies over the last decade to help them write annual plans that inspire and align the entire company around the main focus and a few key initiatives for the year. Let me share a few of the patterns we’ve learned for conducting an effective Annual Planning meeting and make it productive for everyone to attend the meeting.  An effective meeting agenda will have all of the meeting participants on the same page prior to setting foot in the room. 

Your Annual Planning Meeting Agenda has 2 Main Parts: 

Annual planning part 1: long term strategic planning session, annual planning part 2: quarterly execution planning session.

When you design your annual planning agenda, be sure to include time to review and refine your core strategy. Not sure which elements of your core strategy need work? If you are a Rhythm client, your consultant can diagnose which elements need attention now based on the opportunities or challenges you are currently facing.  What are biggest challenges facing your company over the next year?  What are the strengths and weaknesses of your company to meet those challenges?  You may need to create some action items for team members to brainstorm on these issues or gather data to create an effective planning session.  People should also come prepared to discuss what they need to do this year to work towards their 3-5 year strategic plan , you find out how to facilitate a strategic planning session in that popular blog article or see some 3 year strategic plan examples .

Spend time revisiting your 3-5 year financial targets and your Winning Moves, or revenue strategic initiatives to double your top line revenue over the next 3-5 years. You should be working on these strategies throughout the year, having discussions about whether your assumptions are panning out during your weekly or monthly strategy meeting. But, your annual planning session is a great time to revisit moves that are currently being executed and answer key questions, like “What adjustments do we need to make in our execution of this strategy? Is there a way to make it even more successful?” Or, “Is this really a losing move that we need to stop working on?” You should also be sure you have a few potential Winning Moves on your idea bench at all times. You may need to spend some time brainstorming potential new Winning Moves for the future.

After you’ve worked on your strategy, it’s time to move to execution planning for the next year.  If your strategy is the “what,” then execution planning is the “how.” For a complete Annual Plan, we recommend documenting a Main Focus for the year along with success criteria, Targets and Critical Numbers for the year, and 3-5 key Annual Initiatives with Red-Yellow-Green success criteria for all of you annual initiatives.  Create a two day strategic planning agenda based on our annual planning meeting agenda template, or check out our virtual planning services to hire a professional to help you.

As you work on your main focus and key initiatives for the year, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Your annual plan has to be exciting to the whole company. We’ve found that creating a Destination Postcard  is a good way to kick off thinking about your main focus and key initiatives for the upcoming year. This helps the team move from tactical, numbers-focused thinking to more emotional thinking, which is the best way to write a plan that will inspire the whole company to act.
• Your annual plan has to help you hit your longer term goals. Do you have the right targets in place for this year to put you on track to hit the targets on your 3-5 year plan? Do your key initiatives link back to your Winning Moves? Are you working on the right things to eventually get to your BHAG ?
• Your team has to support the plan. If the team in the room doesn’t fully buy into the initiatives for the year, that is going to come out when they share the plan with their departments. Have everyone agree upfront that they will support the plan that the team comes up with for the year, and use a discuss, debate, agree process to ensure that everyone is heard during the meeting.
• Your Annual Initiatives will break down into Quarterly Priorities over the next four quarters. Things can change, but it is a best practice to work on a 4-Quarter Flyover tool to map out when the work will get done during the year on each of the key initiatives. That way, your team can plan better for the year, anticipate resource allocation challenges, and even forecast hiring needs for the year.

If this sounds like a tall order, it certainly is. Many of our clients choose to bring in an outside facilitator to help with their annual planning meeting so that they can focus on participating with their team on the strategy and execution plan for the year. If you do decide to do it yourself, we have resources for our clients including slide decks,  annual planning agendas, and pre-work in Rhythm University. Some small business leaders view this as an expense, however it is really an investment and a good idea that continues to provide return on investment throughout the year.

As a bonus, here are five tips to have the best annual planning meeting ever. You can read all of the tips with descriptions at Annual Planning: 9 Tips to Focus & Align Your Team With a Great Plan .

Tip 1: Begin with the end in mind.

Tip 2: Create a great annual planning session agenda.  (Or use our annual planning agenda)

Tip 3: Come prepared with data and agenda items needed.  

Tip 4: Use a facilitator to get maximum value from your team.  

Tip 5: Set the right tone to be positive when speaking about challenges.  

Tip 6: Be effective versus efficient.  

Tip 7: Use a parking lot to keep the team on track.

Tip 8: Eat the baby elephants in the room before they become grown-ups - have the difficult conversations

Tip 9: Cut if off when the team is tired and pick it up later.

One more thing… one extra tip for CEOs. Spend more time listening than speaking. Be truly curious and use these effective listening strategies . Be the last one to provide input in the discussions. Effective meetings are run by great facilitators that allow everyone to contribute and create an agenda to include input from the cross-functional teams that need to execute the strategic initiatives.  

Annual Planning: 9 Tips to Focus & Align Your Team with a Great Plan

Annual Planning Playbook: 5 Steps to Create a Winning Annual Plan

How CEOs Can Avoid High-Cost Mistakes in Annual Planning

Best Practices for Annual Planning

Rhythm Systems   Annual Planning Resource Center

Photo Credit: iStock by Getty Images

Jessica Wishart

Related Content

Annual strategic planning: reflecting and planning for a great year.

Effective Meetings

What We Learned about Remote Meetings by Planning a Virtual Conference

10 questions to determine if your team needs a virtual planning session, 5 ways to solve problems faster during annual planning, meeting planning checklist: the meeting preparation checklist for effective meetings, quarterly planning for companies with 50+ employees.

How to write a meeting agenda (and run better meetings!)

Learning how to write a meeting agenda that sets the stage for an effective and engaging gathering is an important leadership skill. Not only will it help you be organized and on time, but it will also help you and your team make the most of your time together.

In this guide, we’ll explore what makes a meeting productive and guide you through the process of designing a great meeting agenda . You'll also learn practical tips you can use to improve your next meeting and get every team member engaged and involved. Ready to leave behind boring, unproductive meetings? Let's dive in!

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Going into a meeting without a purpose or a clear sense of what you’re going to cover rarely results in a productive session. Writing a clear step-by-step meeting agenda is a great way to improve your management and facilitation practice. Not only will you be more effective as a team, but you can avoid frustrating or unproductive meetings and get better results too! 

In this guide, we’ll explore what makes a productive meeting and guide you through the process of designing a great agenda . Additionally, we’ll also share some sample meeting agendas so you can see some working examples you can use as the basis of your next meeting.

What is an agenda?

In short, an agenda is a breakdown of all the items that will be covered during a meeting. It should list all of the topics and tasks that will be covered during the meeting and also clearly articulate the purpose and expectations of the meeting. 

Your meeting agenda should also give everyone involved the information they need to successfully attend and adequately prepare . This means including all information relating to logistics, links and attachments and mentioning any preparations you wish everyone to do before the meeting. 

The best meeting agendas also help you effectively run the meeting on the day by giving you a step-by-step list of what to cover and timings for each major section of the meeting. 

A meeting agenda is usually created in a clear, shareable format, such as a Word document or SessionLab agenda. This makes it easy to follow and share with meeting participants.

You can see some examples of a meeting agenda template here . These meeting agendas include meeting objectives and a step by step process complete with timings so you can see how to put them together effectively.

Why is a meeting agenda important?

A meeting agenda is an effective tool for many reasons. First up, it helps ensure the meeting facilitator has everything they need to run an effective meeting. You’ll have an itemized list of every agenda item, reminders of the meeting goal and all your relevant documents attached too.

Perhaps most importantly, a meeting agenda is how you can your meeting participants can stay on track and ensure everything that needs to get done is completed.

Without it, your team meeting can quickly go off the rails or be unproductive. It helps other team members be aware of your core meeting objective, what’s going to be covered, and to give them time and space to prepare.

Preparation

By outlining what will be covered in your meeting, your agenda will ensure every team member can adequately prepare. This might mean preparing discussion topics, supplementary materials, or other items.

Creating your meeting agenda and sending it out well in advance means everyone can do what they need to come to the meeting and make it a success. If you want your meeting attendees to contribute meaningfully, give them a chance to prepare with a good meeting agenda.

Scheduling and logistics

In the most basic terms, a meeting agenda will help everyone involved align their schedules and attend. By including the location or virtual room, date and time, and any necessary links, your meeting agenda will contain all the information people need to be there and adjust their calendars.

You’ll also include information on how long the meeting will run for and timebox each section. If you have multiple people leading sections of the meeting, ensure you include clear timings for each of those sections so everyone can prepare and keep the meeting on track.

Productivity

Even the most simple meeting agenda will enable both the facilitator and participants to be productive . Going into a meeting with a clear agenda and timeboxed schedule means you and your group can be more effective and not get lost in side-discussions or unagreed topics.

In short, an effective meeting agenda clearly sets the stage for what will and what will not be included and can ensure everyone is pushing in the same direction during the meeting.

Get team buy-in

Going into a meeting without clear expectations or an idea of the talking points is frustrating for everyone involved. Make meetings work for everyone by creating and sharing the agenda with the participants and agreeing on the format. 

Getting everyone on board can massively increase the productivity of any project or meeting and by developing a standardised agenda that makes it easy for everyone to understand and attend, they’ll fit more naturally into your team workflow too!

Improve your planning

Documenting your meeting agenda is the first stage in improving the quality of your meetings. DId you find that something in your agenda plan didn’t work out? Need less time for old business and more time on new items or setting follow-up actions? Go back to your agenda and adjust. Use a collaborative agenda planner tool if you want to get comments and feedback on your meeting agenda!

Simplify a recurring meeting

In the case of recurring meetings – whether it be board meetings or a weekly meeting to catch-up – creating an agenda can simplify and streamline the process.

In SessionLab, for example, you can create a meeting agenda template or simply duplicate your session so you don’t have to start from scratch every time.

Improve meeting culture

Creating a meeting template that works for everyone and has been refined over time can help make your entire team more productive and shift the mindset around meetings. 

The work you do in meetings can and should improve all the work you do and a better meeting culture can help teams communicate better and surface issues effectively in any context.

Help identify and remove ineffective meetings

A common complaint of most teams is that they have too many meetings or that the meetings they have are ineffective.

Agenda-setting and following a process when developing your meetings can also help you and your team identify if a meeting should be run at all. We’ll cover this in more detail in our final section on how to decide if you should run a meetin g too!

What to include in a meeting invite?

Getting people to attend the meeting means sending a meeting invitation that includes all the necessary information in a simple, easy to understand format.

You’ll likely send your meeting invite as an email or Calendar invite, though you might also use other dedicated meeting software. Here’s what you should include for your next meeting.

Meeting logistics

Here, you’ll include everything your participants need to know in order to attend the meeting. Including:

• Title of the meeting
• The date and time of the meeting
• The location of the meeting
• For virtual meetings, include a link to the virtual meeting room and any necessary passwords
• The run-time of the meeting
• Host (and co-hosts) of the meeting
• Additional meeting roles such as note taker
• List of participants 

Purpose of the meeting

Ensure you include the purpose of the meeting in your agenda so everyone can understand why they’re being asked to attend and prepare adequately. You may also want to include any links to resources or co-creation documents. Additionally, include any background information to help participants understand the context of the meeting. If it’s the first in a series of meetings or a project retrospective, be sure to include that information here. 

Preparatory work 

If you have any preparations you wish participants to make before the meeting, include them here. This might include contributing ideas to an online whiteboard, reading a document that will be discussed, or preparing questions around the central topic of the meeting. Be sure to include links to any resources and make instructions completely clear.

Meeting agenda

The final section of your meeting invitation should be the agenda for your meeting. This should include a clear, simple list of the topics you will be covering. If a discussion item is led by someone other than the primary facilitator, include that information alongside each entry too. Ensure that the meeting agenda you send your participants covers everything 

What to include in a meeting agenda

Meetings of different purposes and may require different items in their agenda, though they should broadly follow the same structure in order to ensure the whole team can move through it productively.

Remember to set timings for each section so your meeting can run on time and give everyone an indication of the scope of the discussion.

It’s worth noting that while you might have a detailed meeting agenda for yourself and any co-facilitators, you might share a simplified version with your participants.

So long as you ensure that everyone attending has the information they need and a sense of each agenda item, your agenda can be as detailed or as simple as necessary. Let’s dive in!

Introductions and housekeeping 

Here, you’ll make sure everyone who needs to be in the meeting is present and make introductions where necessary. You’ll also briefly reiterate the purpose of the meeting and introduce the meeting leader too.

In a virtual meeting, allow extra time to solve technical issues and get everyone on camera.

Icebreaker (optional)

Meeting icebreakers can be a great way of helping new groups get to know each other or warm-up and prepare a team for a difficult conversation ahead. Depending on your meeting format, agenda and length, you may want to include an icebreaker at the beginning.

Remember that not every meeting needs an icebreaker. A regular weekly standup doesn’t need an icebreaker to warm everyone up. A board meeting with a tight agenda may not need this step either.

On the other hand, an interdepartmental meeting where people are coming together for the first time to discuss better ways of working might benefit from an icebreaker. 

Meeting topics and items for discussion

This is the main bulk of the agenda. Here, you’ll set out all of the items to be covered in your meeting. These might include a review of what was accomplished in a previous meeting, presentations of news and information, discussions, collaborative exercises and more. These items are completely contextual depending on the nature of your meeting and in our next section, you’ll see some example meeting agendas that include all kinds of items. 

Be sure to set a time for each item in your agenda and include a short description. If someone other than the host is leading this section, include that information too. Remember that the purpose of the agenda is to not only outline these items so people can understand the meeting at a glance but also give them opportunity to prepare.

Breaks (optional)

In longer meetings, breaks can be vital in ensuring everyone stays engaged, energized and is able to contribute meaningfully. As a general rule of thumb, a break every 1.5 to 2 hours is a great way to keep everyone happy and keep up group energy levels. Remember that virtual meetings are often more draining and so the necessity for a quick break is even greater in those situations. 

Set follow-up actions

Whatever the format or purpose of your meeting, there are likely to be follow-up actions that should be agreed upon before you adjourn. These might include taking action on items discussed during the meeting, sending notes or resources, or simply agreeing the time and date of follow-ups or later meetings. The more complex the meeting, the more involved this part of the agenda is likely to be, so ensure you set adequate time for this.

When setting follow-up tasks, be sure to give each task an owner and agree with your team members when they will be completed or checked in on. Ownership and timeboxing can help ensure that items set are completed in a timely manner.

All meetings should be brought to an effective close. Give participants an opportunity to add any final items, give feedback or briefly clarify any hanging questions before closing the meeting can help ensure follow up actions are taken and that everyone is on the same page leaving the meeting.

You might even use a closing activity from our library of facilitation methods to help your group meaningfully reflect on the meeting. 

Tips for writing an effective meeting agenda 

Once you know you are running the meeting and have an idea of the framework of the agenda, you’ll want to write up your agenda so you can share it with your participants. This means getting every agenda item in order, articulating your meeting objective and designing for flow and engagement.

Creating a great meeting agenda doesn’t need to be a chore. Check out our tips below for help in writing a meeting agenda that can help your meeting be a success and improve your general meeting facilitation too.

Clearly identify and articulate your meeting goal

One common frustration point for meetings is that not everyone is on the same page regarding the goal or purpose of the meeting. Be absolutely clear on what falls under the remit of the meeting and what falls outside of it. By doing this, you can ensure all attendees are aligned going into the meeting, and you can also identify if additional work needs to be done elsewhere. 

If the goal of a meeting is to align your marketing and product teams on a specific project make sure everyone knows it. When running a board meeting, make it clear what you’re going to cover so that everyone’s time is respected. By identifying and sharing the goal and purpose of the meeting early, you’re helping everyone make it a success.

Ask participants for input

If you’re running a meeting that will benefit from the input of participants, ask them to contribute ideas or possible agenda items in advance of the meeting. Not only can you ensure that the meeting is fit for purpose, but you can also source the best ideas and get team buy-in too.

You might also find that some sections of the meeting are best led by certain team members or stakeholders. Be sure to liaise with those people beforehand and let them know what sections they’ll be running, when and for how long. Switching meeting leaders can be productive, but only if everyone has had a chance to prepare! 

List the topics you want to address

If your meeting is following a discussion format, ensure that you include a list of all the topics or questions you will be discussing in the agenda. Though you might find these changes on the day, listing all of these items ensures participants know what to expect and can begin to prepare answers or know what to think about before the meeting. 

An effective agenda should help you stay on track without effort. Having a list in place also helps with time management and prioritization during the meeting – if you know you have some key topics yet to be discussed, it helps guide the team to end one topic of discussion and move onto the next effectively.

Identify the purpose of each task

Identifying the purpose of your meeting should be the first thing you do, but when it comes to writing your meeting agenda, you’ll want to understand the purpose of each component in order to make it a success. 

Group meetings always benefit from focus and so each task or item should be selected in order to fulfill the purpose of the meeting. If you’re running a project retrospective meeting, you don’t need a section on company-wide news, for example. If you were running an all-day virtual meeting, you might include an online energizer after lunch so that people come back recharged and ready to engage. 

We often find that certain tasks deserve to be explored but a general team meeting is not the place to explore them. In these cases, it’s worth considering how best that work should be done – is it a separate meeting or could it be done asynchronously? Whatever the case, ensure that all of the items in your meeting agenda belong there, and that you’re not overstuffing or trying to combine two meetings. 

Remember that each part of the meeting should relate to your central meeting objective. Design with this in mind and your meetings will be leaner and more productive as a result! 

Meetings that are effectively timeboxed are more productive and less frustrating for all involved. Try not to overrun and set times for each and every section of your meeting agenda. This can help prevent meandering conversations and keep everyone focused. Furthermore, people are less likely to dread attending your meetings if they run on time and they can schedule around them without worry! 

Setting times for discussion items can be difficult if you’ve never run the meeting before – estimate and use your best judgement but also take notes on how much time each section took up. You can go back to your agenda afterwards and improve for the next meeting.

Be simple and clear

Meetings do not need to be complicated and neither should there agendas. Keep your meeting agenda simple, clear and short for the best results. You want your participants to get a sense of the meeting easily, understand what they need to do to prepare and attend. Remember that people tend to have more meetings than they would like – don’t make it difficult for your team members to attend yours! 

Create a reusable template

Creating a meeting agenda from scratch each time is not only a waste of time, but it means you lose the potential to iterate and improve. By creating a template for your meeting agenda , you can speed up the process, develop a standard meeting schedule and also figure out where you can make improvements.

Find that your team meeting agenda overran? Go back to the template and change the timings. Find that energy levels dip in your longer meetings? Find space to include an energizer. 

Making your agenda into a reusable and editable template is the first step to iterating and improving and is made easy in SessionLab too!

Keep it focused

A common mistake when designing a meeting agenda is to try and cram too much in. Your group will be much less effective if you attempt to cover lots of ground and don’t spend enough time where you need to. Try to think of the most important items for every business meeting and ensure your agenda is designed so you can focus on those things.

It is much better to cover key points with the relevant depth so you find solutions and make meaningful decisions rather than try and cover everything. 

Remember that focus is contextual. A daily-standup will have a different focus to a general team meeting agenda or project retrospective. Think of the purpose or goal of the meeting – if what you’re exploring is unrelated to the goal or purpose of the meeting, it shouldn’t be in the meeting. If your goal is to align on the next steps of a project or sum up progress so far, you might cover a lot of ground but it should be related to the core goal.

Get feedback

Improving your meetings can’t happen in a vacuum. Get feedback from your participants on how the meeting went in order to improve the quality and structure of them. You can achieve this by using a debriefing activity or a round of feedback at the end of the meeting.

While this is often the most effective way of getting quick, honest feedback on your meeting, you can also send out a survey afterwards. Whatever method you choose, listen to your meeting participants and make changes so that your meetings continue to be effective and useful for everyone involved. 

Meeting agenda templates

The job of meeting agenda isn’t truly complete until it’s been shared with your participants. But are you wondering what a meeting agenda template looks like and want to see how you might put the finishing touches on an agenda that you might send to clients or internal teams?

For simple meetings, an agenda that covers the main discussion topics in a simple format such as a calendar invite is likely sufficient . See our Team alignment meeting agenda for an example of a simple meeting agenda.

For more involved meetings and group processes, a more in-depth meeting agenda template should be used to adequately prepare everyone involved for the meeting ahead. We’ve included some common meeting formats that require a more complex agenda too. 

These meeting agenda examples will give you a taste of what a completed agenda looks like and hopefully give you inspiration for your own. Let’s take a look!

Team Alignment Meeting

Aligning teams and discussing possible roadblocks or team dependencies is often better in real-time. Being able to bring up ideas and concerns while also clarifying any points in a structured manner can help prevent email back and forths too!

Here’s a simple meeting agenda template made using Google Calendar. Feel free to copy the format and use it for your next team meeting!

Ready for some more complex meeting agendas? We’ve chosen a few common meeting formats and outlined an example agenda for you below. Each of these meeting agendas also features a SessionLab template so you can adjust it to your own needs too. Let’s take a look!

Project Kickoff 

Starting a new project is always worth getting together for. Even if you’re doing preparatory work in a collaborative Google document or working asynchronously for much of the project, a kick-off meeting in real time is an efficient way to align and surface any issues before getting down to work in earnest. Let’s take a look at this meeting agenda template to see how you can set off on the right foot with a short, one-hour meeting.

Project Retrospective

Large projects can take many twists and turns. A retrospective meeting is where you and your team will discuss and learn from such projects with a view to improve things next time around. In this retrospective meeting agenda , see how your group might effectively reflect on a completed project and bring up any essential learning points in less than an hour!

Lightning Decision Jam

Unstructured, meandering discussions can kill a team’s creativity and remove the appetite for future meetings. Use Jonathan Courtney’s Lightning Decision Jam method as the basis for a short meeting in which you can use a group process to make quick, effective and thoughtful decisions. See the method below for full instructions.  

One-Hour Brain Sprint

With the right process, working collaboratively in a real-time meeting can be one of the most effective ways of generating ideas and get every team member involved. Try the One-Hour Brain Sprint template to give your next brainstorming meeting a framework for success. 

How to decide if you should run a meeting?

Organized and well-facilitated meetings can be hugely productive to any group or organisation but not everything should be a meeting . In fact, some meetings can be detrimental to your team if they aren’t thoughtfully designed and run.

We’ve all felt the burnout of having too many meetings or been frustrated by a directionless meeting that feels like a waste of time. Before you set a meeting, ask yourself these questions to decide whether it is worth bringing everyone together.

Does the meeting have a clear goal or purpose?

Whenever you’re considering bringing your team together to work in real-time, it should be with a clear end result you want to achieve. 

If you need to collaborate on a topic or make a decision as a group in real-time, this is a great reason to have a meeting.  If you do not have a goal or purpose, you should reconsider whether you should run the meeting at all. Nothing is more frustrating for a group than a meeting with no reason to be run. 

Remember that a daily catch-up or weekly progress report can be a good reason for a short meeting, though only if you can clearly articulate a goal and purpose. If you can’t, go back and clarify the purpose or goal and really determine if it’s worth holding the meeting. You might find asynchronous work or a simple email is a better option for sharing information or collaborating with your team. 

Could this be summed up in an email?

You don’t need to run a meeting every time you have a small piece of information to share. If your goal is to share information quickly, effectively and without the need for discussion, perhaps that could be shared in an email or on Slack instead?

Some topics are too large for email and if you want to discuss a topic or collaborate on solutions, a meeting might still be the right approach. Before you go in this direction, ask yourself if you couldn’t transmit the information you need to share in an email and save everyone involved the time and effort of an extra meeting. 

Could the meeting work be done asynchronously?

Not all discussions or activities need to be conducted in real-time. When asking a group to collect ideas or bring items for discussion to the table, ask whether you couldn’t do so in a shared document asynchronously. 

Collecting insights in this way allows everyone to contribute in their own time and reflect on the topic meaningfully before adding to the discussion. You will still want to timebox the activity and potentially debrief over email or in a meeting, but allocating tasks asynchronously can not only save time but also make everyone more productive too.

Who needs to be at the meeting?

Some challenges do not need an entire organisation in order to be solved. When holding a meeting, carefully consider who needs to be in the room to make it a success. You might find that you only need to chat to one other person in Slack in order to make something happen. Alternatively, you might still hold a meeting but limit the attendees so it is useful for everyone involved. 

Is the meeting an effective use of everyone’s time? 

Meetings are rarely the most important part of everyone’s day. Disrupting the flow of your team’s working day should only be done if it is an effective use of time for everyone involved. Particularly in times of upheaval or heavy workload, the potential time spent in meetings can mean other work is left incomplete.

If you can achieve the same results without interrupting people whose time is better spent elsewhere, do so. Sometimes an email or invitation to a shared document is sufficient to get the work done. 

Is the meeting actually a workshop?

If the scope or the complexity of the meeting grows, it might be that you are running a workshop and not a meeting. In simple terms, the difference between a meeting and a workshop is that meetings are often where things are discussed while workshops are where groups go through a process and take action. 

Meetings are great for surfacing issues and discussions, while workshops are better at generating ideas, developing solutions and choosing the best followup actions. While both formats are worthwhile in different contexts, workshops employ group process, facilitation techniques and activities in order to be successful and do deeper, more involved work.  

Now you’ve written a great meeting agenda that is clear, simple and fit for purpose, you’re almost set to run your meeting! Here, we’ll explore what you should do next and point out some resources that can help you improve the effectiveness of your meetings too.

Distribute your agenda in advance 

Give your participants adequate time to prepare and adjust their schedules for the meeting. Sending a complete agenda the day of the meeting isn’t sufficient and will only serve to frustrate your participants and lessen the potential productivity of the meeting. 

Remember that the more complex the meeting and the greater the prep work, the more time you want to give your participants between receiving the agenda and running the meeting.

Double check the logistics

Ensure that your meeting room is booked and free if you haven’t done so already and double check that anyone assigned to lead part of the meeting is available and prepared to do so. If you’re using tech as part of your meeting, make sure you have everything you need and perform a technical test if necessary. This is especially important if running an online meeting where the success of your meeting can be entirely lost if your tech fails!

Learn how to run better team meetings

Creating an agenda for your meeting is a vital part of ensuring its success, but running the meeting and managing discussions, tasks and activities requires some additional skills. In our post on running better team meetings , find out how you can encourage better working practices and create more productive meetings too.  

Improve your facilitation skills

Becoming a better facilitator can enable you to lead better meetings and make the most out of any group process. In our post on essential facilitation skills , learn all about the role of the facilitator and what you can do to be a more effective facilitator in meetings, workshops and more! 

Over to you

Learning how to improve your meeting agendas can make all the difference when enabling groups to work together effectively and make the most of their time spent in meetings.

Did we miss something from the list above or did you find one of the meeting agenda templates especially useful? Let us know in the comments below?

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How to Set an Effective Business Plan Agenda

The creation and execution of a robust business plan agenda is fundamental to the trajectory of your company’s success. This agenda serves as a blueprint, directing your team towards the attainment of stated goals, thereby stimulating both individual and organizational growth. To heighten focus and increase productivity within your teams, this detailed guide will take you through the process of crafting an effective planning agenda.

By adhering to this guide, your business plan discussions willnot only become more efficient but they will also become more meaningful, substantial, and purpose-driven.

Crafting the Business Plan Meeting Framework

Through well-structured business plan meetings, comprehensive strategizing and goal-setting can be accomplished effortlessly. The core focus of these meetings is not the location, instead, it’s the review, adjustment, and updates of your corporate plan, carried out either within your office premises or any other conducive environment. This process equips your business management with the requisite planning and foresight for the forthcoming 12 months of operations.

The strategy meeting should be meticulously organized around crucial facets of your operations. Build an agenda that encapsulates all your triumphs as well as setbacks, re-evaluations of the company ethos, strategic questioning, work prioritization, and of course, the stipulation and allocation of milestones. Holding regular monthly and weekly meetings is a testament to your adaptiveness to change and your commitment to continuous growth.

Formulating the Core Framework for the Strategy Meeting Agenda

Comprehensively document achievements and setbacks.

During your strategic meeting, a thorough examination and listing of your company’s triumphs and missteps is an absolutely vital process. Let’s use an example, suppose your company hit a new record in customer satisfaction rates, however, your marketing strategy failed to deliver the anticipated sales results. In scenarios like these, it’s imperative to recognize and address the areas that require improvement, while simultaneously acknowledging and building upon your successes.

Encourage open, unbiased dialogues to detect and address areas that need refinement and to hone successful strategies.

Re-evaluate and Understand Organizational Values

A deeper understanding and periodic re-evaluation of your company’s core values will ensure that your tactics and objectives harmoniously align with your foundational principles. If your corporate philosophy, for instance, is rooted in innovation and collaboration, your objectives should echo these values. This alignment helps strengthen your business’s adherence to its foundational principles. This, in turn, fortifies the company’s sense of purpose and direction.

Target and Address Pivotal Strategic Planning Queries

A strategic business meeting must address underlying issues in order to structure a comprehensive business plan. A candid examination of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis), helps benchmark competition and identify areas in need of improvement. Tasks should be prioritized according to their relative difficulty and importance, whereas consistent setting of milestones aids in monitoring progress and task management.

Regularly scheduled meetings allow for course corrections and adjustments as circumstances demand, thereby ensuring the alignment and effectiveness of your strategic meetings.

Rank and Categorize Tasks According to Difficulty, Importance and Urgency

An effective way to improve your business plan agenda is by appropriately ranking tasks in accordance with their complexity level, urgency, and relevance.

For example, if launching a new product is a top priority, you may need to direct a greater share of time and resources towards its realization. On the other hand, a complex yet vital task may need to be broken down into manageable chunks to facilitate progress and preempt potential roadblocks. Prudent task prioritization ensures the optimal use of resources while maintaining a clear sight of your objectives.

Mark Milestones and Delegate Responsibilities

Identifying clear milestones offers a quantifiable path that aids in tracking progress and steering the team towards goal achievement. For instance, setting an objective to enhance customer acquisition rates by 20% within a 6-month period can serve as a milestone.

Additionally, the allocation of responsibilities to team members fosters role clarity and accountability. For instance, entrusting the marketing team with the execution of a new marketing strategy encourages ownership and helps team members comprehend their role in the overall scheme of things. The strategic interplay between defined milestones and designated responsibilities can significantly streamline operations, thereby enhancing the overall efficiency of your business.

Essential Aspects to Consider for Regular Business Plan Meetings

Efficiently executing regular business plan meetings necessitates certain considerations. The use of pre-work prompts participants to come to meetings well-prepared for productive discussions. Providing attendees with quality food and snacks help maintain focus and aid in maintaining optimal energy levels. Holding meetings off-site can reduce workplace distractions while promoting active engagement. Employing an independent facilitator encourages balanced participation from all members.

Prioritizing strategic topics before delving into action items and valuing the team’s needs over individual desires are also key ingredients for successful meetings. With these factors in mind, your business plan meetings will be more effective and in tune with your organization’s objectives. To conclude, paying close attention to various aspects, such as pre-work, meeting venue, facilitator, meeting structure, can make your routine business plan meetings productive and engaging.

Remember to adapt the agenda and meeting format to cater to your organization’s unique needs and objectives. Here’s to efficient and effective business plan meetings!

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The 4 Meeting Agendas that Drive Strategic Execution (Plus Guidebooks for Each)

• Introduction
• The Dual Cadence of Leadership Meetings
• The Leadership Team Meeting Agenda Templates

The Daily Huddle

The weekly leadership team meeting, annual strategic planning, the quarterly strategic refresh.

• BONUS: The Monthly + Anytime Decision Making Meeting
• How the Leadership Cadence Meetings Work Together
• Additional Resources

1. Introduction

When we started Lucid Meetings , it wasn’t because we were all excited about meetings.

It was because meetings are the most powerful tool, but also the most neglected, underdeveloped, and misapplied tool, we can use to create a healthy business.

The meetings aren’t the goal. It’s the well-run business that we’re after.

Recently we’ve been exploring the science and theory behind what makes meetings successful.

You can read all about the core function of meetings , the underlying structures that make them work , and the science behind effective decision making in meetings on our blog.

Today, we’re putting all that into practice. This post covers the core meetings that drive effective business management.

2. The Dual Cadence of Leadership Meetings

In his 2017 letter to shareholders , Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos emphasized the importance of accelerating decision making velocity. High-performing leadership teams make decisions rapidly, but not recklessly.

To do so, they need to understand the organization’s overall strategy, so they can make decisions in line with that strategy. They also need to understand the context in which they operate, so their decisions can be implemented.

The leadership team’s job is to make decisions that keep reality aligned with the strategy, and the strategy relevant to the day-to-day reality.

To make this work, they must act at two levels.

• They work on the business , setting strategy, reviewing performance, and safe-keeping the organization’s long term health. This is the strategic level, setting the organization’s aspirations.
• They work in the business , managing teams, monitoring programs, and clearing any roadblocks that get in the way. This is the operational level, grounded in the organization’s reality. 

These two levels of focus are deeply linked yet distinct.  But the kind of thinking and decision making we need when resolving a logistics problem ( operations ) is not the kind of thinking we need when evaluating the threat posed by a looming budget shortfall ( strategy ). 

The way a team talks about their work changes the work. If we talk about the big strategic challenges the same way we approach our day-to-day tasks, we waste unnecessary time on the small items and give the big ones short shrift.

This is why it’s important to keep meetings at the  operational  and  strategic  levels separate.

The frequency of operational meetings drives the organization’s work momentum.

Leadership teams hold operational meetings often to make sure all the moving parts stay coordinated and problems can be raised and solved quickly.

Frequent operational meetings also ensure that leaders know their reality. They do not let days of change and drift pass between check-ins; they have their fingers on the pulse.

The frequency of strategic meetings drives the organization’s adaptability.

Adjust strategy too often and the organization flails. Wait too long, though, and the organization either stagnates by sticking with a plan that no longer works, or loses coherence as people forget the original strategy and become lost in the everyday minutiae.

This creates the following rules for leadership team meetings:

• Keep operational and strategic meetings separate.
• Hold operational meetings frequently. Weekly at a minimum.
• Hold strategic meetings periodically. Quarterly at a minimum.
• Plan for both. Strategy drives the operational reality, and a grounding in reality keeps the strategy relevant.

3. The Leadership Team Meeting Agenda Templates

The meeting agenda templates and guides outlined below provide a solid foundation for scheduling and running your leadership team’s meeting cadence .

There are 5 meetings in the series.

The Operational Meeting Cadence:

The Strategic Meeting Cadence:

• Quarterly Strategic Refresh

The Monthly + Anytime Decision Making Meeting

Before you invest the time figuring out if these meeting agenda templates will work for your team, let me address some questions you may have.

What can I expect from these meetings?

Running these meetings will change how you work together, how you feel about your work and how you feel about each other.

Teams that adopt this meeting cadence dedicate time to solving problems and making decisions together, and to using proven methods that result in the best decisions available to them.

This cadence increases transparency and accountability. It demands discipline and encourages constructive debate. It will challenge any team that isn’t confronting their elephants.

These meetings demand more, and deliver more. They’re also way more fun than the traditional soul-sucking staff meeting.

The templates themselves provide a framework for each meeting based on best practices. Each is a good example of how to approach that meeting, adapted from many other good examples.

How important is it that we follow a template exactly?

It isn’t! These templates show one way to run each meeting. The facilitator’s guide also includes tips for adapting each meeting and links to other good examples.

The specific agendas can and should change to match your team’s work requirements, as long as you stick to a regular cadence and ensure each agenda you use achieves the goals for that meeting.

“The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us?” another gem from Jeff Bezos’ 2017 shareholder letter

That said, before changing an agenda too much, make sure you’re doing so for the right reason. While it may not feel natural at first, every agenda item in these meetings serves a results-oriented purpose.

What do I need to use these templates?

• You need a strategy.
• You need a way of measuring progress.
• You need the discipline to work your strategy.
• Your team needs the ability and willingness to raise and wrestle with hard issues.

Can I use these templates if my team doesn’t have any of that?

Yes, but you’ll have to adjust many of the agendas to find another way of discussing your progress.

If you lack a strategy or a way of measuring progress, we recommend starting there. For a simple soup-to-nuts approach, try Anna O’Byrnes Essential Strategic Planning Toolkit , which walks you through the basics and gets you some measurable goals.

Alternatively, start here and do some shopping:  Navigating the Dozens of Different Strategy Options

If the team lacks discipline or constructive dialogue techniques, you can try establishing this meeting cadence as part of how you build that. Expect resistance. Coaching may help.

Books you might also find helpful: Five Dysfunctions of a Team , Crucial Conversations .

My ( leadership coach, executive consultant, favorite management book, etc. ) says we must ( use XYZ technique, measure ABC, etc. ) to succeed. Why isn’t that included in your templates?

These templates are designed to work regardless of the specific strategic planning framework or management methodology you use. They provide an effective foundation for teams that don’t have an established meeting practice, and inspiration for teams who need to try something new.

If your practice says you need to varnish the OKRs/Rocks/KPIs, please substitute those anywhere that we talk about scorecards and metrics below. If you need to establish quorum to start a meeting, or open with a prayer, please do.

You are free to color outside the lines.

We’ve prepared facilitator guides for all the meetings described here, and put them together in a single packet that you can download at the end of the post. You can also get the guide for each individual meeting if there’s one that interests you.

Let’s take a look at these meetings in more detail.

4. The Operational Management Meetings

Driving day-to-day execution.

There are two meetings in the operational cadence; a short Daily Huddle and a longer weekly team meeting. Both meetings include time spent sharing information, ensuring all leaders work with the latest updates.

Both meetings also devote some time to building inter-team relationships, which helps the leadership group work well together. The main focus for these meetings, however, is problem solving.

The Daily Huddle is a short meeting designed to keep teams in synch and kick the day into gear. You may know it by its other name: the daily stand-up .

This meeting is administrative in nature, covering who’s doing what today, where they’re stuck, and any opportunities they can share.

Desired Outcomes

When run well, a Daily Huddle:

• Eliminating a lot of email back-and-forth spent coordinating schedules, hand-offs, etc.
• Answering the “What is Fred up to?” question
• Relieving anxiety caused by uncertainty
• People share info & resources that can help a colleague with an immediate problem
• Teams prevent wasted or duplicative effort
• Someone discovers a chance to learn or participate in a new activity
• Getting someone help quickly when blocked
• Re-routing dependent activity
• Re-balancing assignments during crunch times

The Daily Huddle Process

Process: 15 minutes or less. Everyone stands if meeting in person.

When assembled, the group starts an informal go around. Each person shares:

• Plans for the day
• Stuck/Blocks and possibly
• New key decisions or learning
• Confidence on goal completion

Tips for the Huddle

• The Huddle is for identifying obstacles and finding help. The problem solving itself happens after the Huddle between only those people who need to be involved.
• If no one raises any issues for more than a few days in a row, probe harder. There are always issues, and this meeting is about finding them while they’re still small.
• Make sure people share any time when they plan to be unavailable, either due to work or personal commitments. This lets everyone else know to expect delays getting replies and plan accordingly.

For more details, download the facilitator’s guide for running this meeting:

The Weekly meeting lasts 60 – 90 minutes, and is scheduled for the same time and day each week. In this meeting, teams drive accountability to the plan and identify and resolve issues impeding progress.

While there is some discussion of status and progress, this agenda keeps all that short. Instead, much more time goes directly into problem solving.

It’s a very rewarding way to work, because not only do you stay up-to-date, you see that you’re part of a group that can deal with issues and get stuff done.

When run well, a Weekly Leadership meeting:

• Keeping strategic priorities visible
• Revealing progress (or lack thereof) on goal achievement
• Alerting the team to changes or trends that indicate a bigger problem
• Dedicating time to resolving one or two blocking problems every week
• Requiring that the most important issues get addressed, not ignored
• Celebrating victories together
• Sharing personal connections
• Building trust through guided, constructive confrontation
• Fostering a sense of accomplishment

The Weekly Leadership Team Meeting Agenda

Duration: 90 minutes

• Welcome & Review Actions List (5 minutes)
• Schedule Announcements (5 minutes)
• Victories (5 minutes)
• Review the Numbers (5 minutes)
• Quarterly Priorities & Progress (5 minutes)
• Identify Top Issues (5 minutes)
• Tackle Top Issues (50 minutes)
• Review and Confirm Actions List (10 minutes)

Tips for the Weekly Leadership Team Meeting

• The first 5 agenda items reconnect the team with each other, their commitments, and the previously stated goals. This is how you keep accountability to execution front-and-center.
• An issue or challenge has been addressed when the team decides on a course of action and assigns an owner and due date. To drive follow-up, you’ll review this action list at the close and beginning of every weekly meeting.

5. The Strategic Management Meetings

Driving the correct course of action.

There are three meetings in the strategic cadence: an Annual Strategic Planning meeting, a Quarterly Strategic Refresh, and the Monthly + Anytime Strategy meeting. The three meetings operate at different levels of detail and scope.

• The Annual meeting establishes the high-level strategy for the coming year.
• The Monthly + Anytime meeting solves a specific strategic challenge. This meeting can be scheduled any time it’s needed (hence the name) and/or scheduled on a recurring monthly basis.

The strategic planning process is where teams paint their grandest visions. It is a time to imagine bright futures and think big thoughts, then wrestle these visions into a form that can be translated into action.

Most groups dedicate at least one to two days for strategic planning every year. In our case, we run strategic planning sessions as a set of short two-hour workshops.

Many larger organizations will spend weeks gathering input before leading a series of planning workshops that then produce annual, 5-year, and even longer-range plans.

What constitutes big or strategic? That’s relative, and because it varies so dramatically from group to group, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to strategic planning.

The design for your Annual Strategic Planning sessions will depend on:

• Whether you have an existing plan, or are starting from scratch
• The stability of your organization and operating environment
• The size and nature of the planning team
• The time you can devote to planning

Our gallery has a sampling of Strategic Planning meeting templates appropriate for those of you who need a place to start.

You can  pick and choose the ones you need, or  run all of the meetings in this series:

• Vision & Mission
• Organizational Values
• Goals & Strategies
• The Essential Strategic Planning Toolkit  (all meetings)

Stable groups might prefer Paul Axtell’s Quick Strategic Refresh .

This meeting requires at least 4 hours to run, but while it’s possible to cover the material in that time, it’s not ideal. Where the annual planning meeting asks everyone to think big picture and long term, the Quarterly meeting requires that teams face their truths.

Are the organization’s actions lined up with the vision? How well have the projections matched reality? What’s going on in the outside world that means your plans need to change?

90 days—or one quarter—is long enough that teams can see results (or lack thereof). It’s also long enough that it’s become hard for everyone to keep the spirit of the original strategy fresh in their minds.

Quarterly Strategy meetings often raise questions about what the original strategy actually meant, as differences have had time to grow.

When possible, we recommend scheduling a 1 to 2 day off-site for this meeting. Moving off site helps the group step away from the day-to-day operations, and provides better opportunities for reinforcing the relationships you need in place in order to work through challenging questions.

When run well, a Quarterly Strategic Refresh meeting:

• Revisiting the plan and clarifying definitions
• Challenging assumptions
• Reviewing recent events for impact to the overall strategy
• Reviewing past performance against targets so new reality-based targets can be set
• Documenting the specific programs and targets for every functional group in the coming 90 days
• Celebrating victories and accomplishments
• Sharing key learnings, goals and challenges
• Working together to establish a 90 day plan to which the whole team can commit

The Quarterly Strategic Meeting Agenda

This is an outline only. You’ll find more detail in the facilitator’s guide.

• Past quarter highlights
• Key learnings
• Goals for the day
• Review Agenda
• Review the overall strategy
• Review quarterly progress
• Review the open issues list
• What went well and why?
• What didn’t go well and why?
• What’s changed in our overall context in the past 90 days?
• What do we need to adjust in our approach for next quarter?

Checkpoint and LONG Break

• Reconnect One-word phrase: How are you feeling about tackling the planning in front of us?
• What do we specifically need to start, stop, and continue?
• Define metrics: New quarterly targets, KPIs, etc
• Define action plan: Who, What, When
• Review Parking Lot
• Confirm plans
• Identify key messages to be shared with stakeholders
• Anything else that needs to be said?
• Offer appreciations
• One-phrase review

Tips for the Quarterly Strategic Meeting

• Take breaks every 90 minutes or so. This gives people time to talk in small groups and think through any hard issues. It also helps everyone stay more focused in the meeting, giving them a chance to check in on the day-to-day activity.
• Keep the discussion structured but not rigid. You’re a team of colleagues working together to drive your business – this should feel more like an intense meeting and less like an over-planned workshop.
• If you have the time, add more to the agenda. The quarterly meeting can be a good time for the leadership team to evaluate key personnel, for example. A shared meal or two creates opportunities for deeper discussion and relationships.

Does all that look like too much? Paul’s Strategic Refresh is a shorter meeting that can be used as a Quarterly Refresh for groups that don’t want or need to go this deep.

Last but not least, the Monthly + Anytime meeting dedicates time to deeply investigating and addressing a specific strategic challenge. The process follows best practices for problem solving and decision making with a group.

We call this an “anytime” meeting because it should be scheduled any time a serious strategic issue comes up. That said, we’ve included it in the leadership cadence because many organizations find it useful to put one of these meetings on the calendar every month – before a problem occurs.

Why schedule a problem solving meeting before you know you have a problem? Three reasons:

• This is a longer meeting involving key decision makers in your organization. It can be very hard to get time on their calendar on short notice.

Without a monthly time reserved, it’s tempting to tackle strategic issues during the weekly meeting, which sabotages the tactical nature of that meeting and leads to rushed and/or sloppy decision making.

• There are always strategic challenges! New opportunities, new threats, hard decisions: c’mon! You know this stuff will come up, so you might as well have a plan for dealing with it.

When run well, a Monthly + Anytime Strategic meeting:

• Establishing a clear understanding of the issue and goals
• Driving healthy debate between informed options
• Documenting the decision
• Setting clear expectations about the decision authority and criteria
• Using an inclusive process to hear from all voices
• Defining next steps with identified owners and due dates

The Monthly + Anytime Strategic Meeting

• Confirm purpose
• Clarify the decision making process
• Present the Decision Challenge
• Debate & Discuss Options
• Decide and Commit
• Set next steps: who, what, when
• Determine cascading messages: who needs to know what?
• Set a date to review the decision outcome
• Final review: anything that needs to be answered, said, or addressed?
• Appreciations
• Meeting feedback

Tips for the Monthly + Anytime Strategic Meeting

• You can tackle more than one topic if they’re not too large. This process is designed to tackle a single strategic challenge. If you want to tackle more than one topic, you will need to repeat steps 2 through 5 for each. Anticipate at least 30 minutes for each smaller decision.
• Preparation is required. The team needs good information to make good decisions, which means someone has to do the research first.
• Decide on the appropriate decision making process in advance. Learn more about that in our guide to Making Decisions in Meetings .

6. How the Leadership Cadence Meetings Work Together

Now that we’ve looked at the individual meetings in the series, let’s see how they all work together to keep an organization humming.

A 90 (ok, 94) Day Schedule

Here’s one way you might plan out this cadence for a quarter.

• Days 1-2: All day Annual Strategic Planning (16 hours) Your team sets the strategy, annual priorities and target metrics for the first quarter.
• Day 3: Daily Huddles begin. Huddles take 10 minutes. The Huddle is a short meeting with verbal reports, so no one needs any extra prep time.

Week 2 – 13:

In the first week, there isn’t much to report. As the weeks go by, though, it gets easier to see which parts of the plan aren’t working out as planned. Some issues are straightforward, so the team knocks those out in the weekly meeting. Others are harder, so they get put on the list for the monthly strategic meeting.

Held every day except Monday, when the team already spends 90 minutes together. After a few weeks of this regular check-in, you start to notice patterns. Maybe you discover that the different groups aren’t working at the same pace, creating constant delays. Maybe some departments are crushing it and others always seem to be struggling. No big emergencies, but you’ve got a feel for the pulse and a sense for where you need to make adjustments in how the organization operates.

Weeks 4 and 9:

In one of the Monday meetings, your team brought up a problem or an opportunity that couldn’t be resolved in 30 minutes. So in your Weekly Leadership meeting, you assigned one or two people to conduct more research and make recommendations.

The leaders researching the challenge dug into the details, and sent a report to everyone outlining the facts. They also worked with their teams and colleagues to find at least 3 viable options to decide between. Depending on the challenge, this could have taken hours or days – time spent making sure the team makes the best possible decision they can.

Not everyone on the leadership team needs to attend the Monthly Strategic meeting. If this month’s challenge comes from the marketing department, and the safety lead doesn’t really have any skin in that game, she may choose to bow out. Those who do participate make sure they’ve read the report in advance and come prepared, each spending up to an hour getting ready for the meeting.

At the end of the Monthly Strategic meeting, the team has a decision and a set of new action items to add to the list they’ll review during next Monday’s Weekly Leadership meeting.

Week 14 and it’s been 90 days since your team set the strategic plan. With the Daily Huddles, you’ve learned the day-to-day rhythm of how work flows through the organization. The Weekly Leadership meetings have shown where the original plan is working well, and where it’s not. You’ve been deeply involved in all the small, important work of execution.

Finally, during the Monthly Strategic meeting you’ve learned how to critically examine big issues and refine specific strategies.

Now it’s time to pull back and look at the big picture. Given everything you’ve learned about each other, the organization, and the work at hand, what needs adjustment? What should the targets for this coming quarter be? Which big challenges do you still need to dig into? You’ll dedicate Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning to refining the plan, enjoying a nice dinner in between.

After the Quarterly Strategic meeting, one person will make sure that the new targets are all set up so you can start reviewing them in next Monday’s Leadership meeting.

… and repeat.

A 10% Time Investment That Drives Your Business

I did the math, and here’s a surprise. While the plan above looks and sounds like a ton of time spent in meetings, it represents just 10% of a full-time employee’s available time.

Actually, just under 10%; 4.9% spent in operational meetings (26.5 hours) and 5% in strategy sessions (27 hours) over the course of 13 weeks and 2 days (536 hours).

In reality, some people will spend more time than this. Anyone researching an issue for the Monthly Strategic meeting needs to spend considerable time there. Everyone needs to add another hour or two over the course of the quarter to prepare for the Weekly meetings by updating their metrics and action items.

And the Quarterly meeting requires yet another hour or two of prep from everyone involved. Annual Planning also takes more time – but far less in years 2 and 3 than it did before you put this cadence in place, because you’re building and refining instead of starting from scratch. 

This is an incredibly efficient approach to managing a business.

Personally, I’ve worked in environments without this structure where we spent WAY more time talking about our progress, lack of progress, and strategic challenges – rarely ever deciding on ways to solve our problems.

We just kept talking about them and pointing fingers and bemoaning how impossible it all was because we didn’t know what else to do.

I’m happy to have learned a better way.

7. Next Steps

Lucid Meetings is a system designed to support a meeting cadence like this.

If you use or want to try out this pattern with your team, you should give our software a try. We have a template for each meeting described here that will make your setup, action item tracking, and meeting management a breeze.

You can also download our facilitator’s guides to learn how to lead these meetings and run them however you see fit.

We have a guide for each meeting, and a packet that includes the guides to all the meeting templates mentioned in this post. Expect to kill some trees if you want to print it out; it’s hefty stuff.

Finally, we developed this meeting cadence after lots of research and experimentation. We are building on the work of the many others who have gone before.

Our choices may or may not be right for you, so I’ve listed a selection of additional resources below. There you’ll find lots of variations on this theme, and perhaps some alternate techniques that better fit your crew.

As always, comments, questions, and corrections are very welcome. Now go run a magnificent organization!

General FAQ

What is ‘the dual cadence’ of leadership meetings.

Leadership Teams must act at two levels.

• They work in the business , managing teams, monitoring programs, and clearing any roadblocks that get in the way. This is the operational level, grounded in the organization’s reality.

What are the five critical Leadership Team meetings?

• The Daily Huddle (an operational meeting)
• The Weekly Leadership Team Meeting (an operational meeting)
• Annual Strategic Planning (a strategic meeting)
• Quarterly Strategic Refresh (a strategic meeting)
• The Monthly + Anytime Decision Making Meeting (a strategic and/or operational meeting)

What can I expect from these Leadership Team meetings?

How important is it that we follow your example template exactly.

It isn’t! These templates show one way to run each meeting. The facilitator’s guide also includes tips for adapting each meeting and links to other good examples.

What do I need in place before using your example templates?

Can i use your example templates if my team doesn’t have discipline, why don’t your example templates include my leadership coach’s favorite techniques, how do the leadership cadence meetings work together.

You’ll want to develop your own Meeting Flow Model that connects all the dots. We’ve provided a great starting point for you and you should probably begin with that. But in the end you’ll want to make this your own ⏼ and we heartily encourage that!

8. Additional Resources

Business management.

• Patrick Lencioni “ Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business “
• Geno Wickman, “ Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business “
• Verne Harnish , “ Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) “
• Peter Drucker, “ The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done “

Meeting Design

• Dick and Emily Axelrod, “ Let’s Stop Meeting Like This “
• Rick Lent, “ Leading Great Meetings: How to Structure Yours for Success “
• Paul Axtell, “ Meetings Matter: 8 Powerful Strategies for Remarkable Conversations “
• The Role of Meetings in the Social Practice of Strategy

Articles and Blog Posts

• The Art of the Huddle
• Counter-Intuitive Leadership: Building Teams That Can (Accurately) Predict the Future (about the Weekly meeting)
• The Importance Of Management Meeting Agendas (Before, During, & After)
• Recognize and Plan for Results – The Quarterly Meeting
• Effective Quarterly Meeting Planning
• How to Make a Big Impact at Your Next Quarterly Meeting
• The Big Lie of Strategic Planning
• Five Steps to a Strategic Plan
• Video:  Dave Snowden – How leaders change culture through small actions
• Strategy: Blog posts and templates
• Debunking 4 Common Myths about Stand-Up Meetings
• How often should you meet? Selecting the right meeting cadence for your team.
• Making Decisions in Meetings
• The Meeting Performance Maturity Model

Categories: leadership & facilitation ​ strategy

Elise Keith

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• July 19, 2023

Sample Board Meeting Agenda Template

• --> Written by Toni Hoy
• Best Practices , BLOG , Board Administrator

It’s a rare meeting where the board of directors has enough time to accomplish everything it needs to, and having an established and focused board meeting agenda helps the board maximize accuracy, efficiency, and productivity. A board meeting agenda lists the items a board needs to discuss in chronological order during a board meeting.

Board meeting agendas  include items for managing routine business and tackling special projects. This article gives an overview of the following:

• What is a board meeting agenda?
• Why board meeting agendas are important
• Structure of a board meeting agenda
• How to create an agenda for a board meeting
• Sample board meeting agenda template

What Is an Agenda for Board Meetings?

A board meeting agenda serves as a roadmap for the board chair in conducting a board meeting. It lists the board meeting items the board needs to discuss in the order they need to discuss them.

A board meeting agenda will also contain the following elements :

• Nonprofit’s name , address
• Date, time, and location of the meeting
• Names of those invited to attend

Who Sets the Agenda for Board Meetings?

In most cases, the board secretary will set the agenda for a board meeting, although any board member can do it. The secretary often puts the board meeting agenda together in collaboration with the board president. The secretary typically asks board members if they have any items they want to be added to the agenda. All this can be done within your board management system.

Why Are Board Meeting Agendas Important?

Primarily, board meeting agendas set the tone for a meeting and give the board direction. These agendas are of great value for the board chair when using Robert’s Rules of Order to facilitate the meeting. In addition, it assist the board secretary in writing up meeting minutes .

Here are some other advantages to using a board meeting agenda for every board meeting:

• Ensures all discussion items are covered
• Tasks can be assigned to board members for follow-up
• Promotes collaboration
• Sets time limits for discussions
• Reduces off-topic discussions
• Assists the board secretary in taking minutes
• Streamlines the meeting

Structure of a Typical Board Meeting Agenda

What should be included in a board meeting agenda? The structure of a typical board meeting agenda includes the following elements:

• Call to order – The board chair announces, “The meeting is now called to order” and states the time.
• Welcoming remarks – The board chair welcomes everyone and makes introductions if necessary.
• Reading of the mission and vision statements – This is an optional step.
• Roll call – The board secretary takes a roll, which can be oral and should also be written.
• Changes to the agenda – The board chair asks if any of the members wish to make any changes to the agenda. If so, the board votes on additions, changes, or deletions.
• Quorum – The board chair states whether a quorum is present.
• Approval of minutes – The board chair calls for a vote to approve the prior meetings’ minutes.
• Officer reports – The executive director gives a report followed by reports by the officers if applicable.
• Financial reports – The treasurer gives a report of donations, the budget, and any potential expenditures.
• Committee reports – Committee chairs may give a brief oral report of their committee’s work.
• Old business – Discussion of items that were not resolved at the last meeting, those that need further discussion, and those that require a vote.
• New business – Discussion of new items along with the action needed to table them, delay action on them, or refer them to a committee.
• Action items – A review of tasks board members need to do before the next meeting.
• Comments, announcements, and other business – The board chair offers congratulations, condolences, and makes other special announcements.
• Adjournment – The board chair announces the formal closing of the meeting and states the time the meeting ended.

The parts of the agenda may be listed as numerals or Roman numerals to identify board items for discussion.

What Is a Consent Agenda for a Board Meeting?

Boards often use a consent agenda to group routine items that must be voted on at every meeting into one agenda item. Consent agendas help to streamline board meetings and allow more time for other agenda items.

What Is an Executive Session?

The board may also go into executive session at any time during the meeting. It’s common for boards that use executive sessions at every meeting to hold an executive session at the beginning or end of a board meeting. Executive sessions may also be held outside of a board meeting.

How to Create an Agenda for a Board Meeting

A focused agenda sets the stage for greater participation and engagement by the board. A clear, concise agenda assists the board chair in making sure the board addresses everything they need to.

The following list can serve as a checklist for creating a board meeting agenda:

• Review the prior meeting’s agenda
• Use a board agenda template
• Fill in the appropriate agenda items
• Ask for feedback from the board by a certain date
• Finalize the agenda
• Review the final board agenda with the board chair

Once the secretary creates the agenda, they should send it out to all members in enough time for them to review it and request additions, deletions, or changes. The final agenda helps the board chair keep the board meeting on track and moving along. After the chair calls the meeting to order, the agenda of a board meeting may be modified at the start of the meeting by board member request.

Pre- meeting Preparation

The prior meeting’s agenda serves as a template for the next meeting. The secretary should preplan the agenda by reviewing the past agenda and  minutes,  and asking board members for items or issues to be included. This reminds board members to prepare reports or other documents that need to be brought before the board.

Also, the board secretary should make sure the meeting space is available and has the necessary equipment to run the meeting.

ABC Nonprofit

123 Main St.

Anytown, USA 12345

January 1, 2023

Time: 9:00 am

Organization

123 Main St. Suite A

I. Call to Order

II. Approval of the Agenda

III. Approval of the Minutes

IV. Reports

• Executive Director
• Finance Director
• Nominating Committee
• Governance Committee
• Public Relations Committee

V. Old Business

• Board nominations
• Contract negotiations

VI. New Business

• Special Event

VII. Comments and Announcements

VIII. Adjournment

Next meeting date is March 1, 2023

To save you the trouble of having to find a board meeting agenda template for your board to use, we have created a sample board meeting agenda template your board can use immediately. Our board meeting agenda sample can be used when the full board meets, as well as for committee work.

Download the Board Meeting Agenda Template now.

Use a Board Meeting Agenda Template For Every Meeting

A  well-planned agenda  with a structured order is important for a successful board meeting. To keep discussions from going on way too long, the agenda should state the meeting end time, and the board chair should review the agenda before the meeting starts and have an idea of how much time the board can spend on various agenda items, so the meeting doesn’t run over time.

One of the benefits of an electronic agenda is that it’s easy to list a start time for each agenda item to help the board chair keep the meeting on track. This is a great strategy for reining in meetings that are taking too long or when the agenda includes items that require plenty of discussion.

The board agenda should be seen as a tool for doing board business in an efficient, fair, and productive manner. To be effective, use your board meeting agendas with consistency and fidelity.

If you would like to learn more about how BoardEffect can support your board agenda management, we’d love to speak with you! Request a demo and let us share how we help more than 5,000 boards in 48 countries.

BoardEffect , a Diligent solution, leads in providing innovative boardroom technology to nonprofit organizations. Serving 14,000 mission-driven organizations, Diligent empowers boards with tools to drive positive change. Our secure board management software streamlines operations, enhances governance practices, and enables confident decision-making. With BoardEffect, mission-driven organizations unlock potential, accelerate mission delivery, and make lasting impact in their communities.

Want to simplify your board meeting process?

Learn why 180k+ users are using boardeffect for their board portal solution.

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Meeting Agenda Template

Maximize productivity with free meeting agenda templates that enhance team collaboration, streamline communication, and foster accountability. Make a meeting agenda in Confluence for free

What is a meeting agenda template?

A meeting agenda template is a predefined format or structure for planning and organizing a meeting’s topics, activities, and objectives. It serves as a guide to ensure that meetings are focused, efficient, and productive.

Benefits of using a meeting agenda template

Incorporating a meeting agenda template into your team’s workflow offers many advantages that can enhance the productivity and effectiveness of your meetings. Let’s explore some key benefits of using a meeting agenda template and how Confluence’s features can support these advantages.

Enhances collaboration

A meeting agenda template fosters collaboration among team members by providing a structured framework for organizing discussions and encouraging active participation from all attendees.

A well-designed agenda clearly outlines the meeting’s objectives, topics, and expectations, giving participants a roadmap. This structure helps keep discussions focused and on track, making it possible to cover all the essential items within the allotted time. Confluence’s features, such as in-line comments, @mentions, and real-time collaboration, enable smooth project collaboration during agenda creation and meeting execution.

Optimizes time management

A meeting agenda template optimizes time management during meetings by delineating specific time allocations for each agenda item.

For instance, the agenda helps keep the meeting on track by assigning a set duration to each topic. This ensures the meeting covers all the essential points within the designated time frame, preventing a single issue from dominating the meeting and keeping discussions focused and relevant.

Confluence’s table formats and macros, such as the Date macro for specifying agenda item deadlines, help structure and time-box meeting discussions effectively.

Improves communication

A meeting agenda template improves communication by clearly outlining the meeting’s objectives, topics, and expectations. This ensures all participants are on the same page and understand the meeting’s purpose. The agenda provides a structured overview of the discussion points, minimizing confusion and misunderstandings about what the meeting will cover. By using Confluence to organize related meeting documents and page history to track changes and revisions, teams can maintain clear and consistent knowledge sharing throughout the meeting process. Confluence provides a dedicated meeting notes template to streamline meeting documentation further.

Fosters preparation

Using a meeting agenda template helps foster preparation among participants by informing them beforehand about the topics the meeting will cover. Sharing the agenda before the meeting allows attendees to review the discussion points, familiarize themselves with the subject matter, and gather relevant information or resources. Confluence’s quick-start templates for project kickoffs , plans , and OKRs support this preparation process by providing structured formats for organizing and presenting information.

Increases accountability

A meeting agenda template increases participant accountability by assigning responsibilities and roles. It ensures that everyone understands their commitments and encourages them to actively engage in achieving meeting objectives.

Assigning specific tasks or discussion points to individuals on the agenda creates a sense of ownership and responsibility for those items. Participants are more likely to come prepared and contribute when they know they are accountable for certain aspects of the meeting.

Confluence’s ability to assign action items to specific people enhances this accountability, ensuring the completion of the tasks that the participants agreed upon.

Promotes consistency

A meeting agenda template promotes consistency in meeting practices by including essential elements such as date, time, objectives, and agenda items. It enhances overall efficiency and effectiveness in meeting management.

By using a standardized template, teams can maintain a uniform structure across all their meetings, making it easier for participants to navigate and understand the agenda. This consistency helps create a familiar framework that lets attendees grasp the meeting’s purpose, objectives, and discussion points quickly, saving time and reducing confusion.

Confluence’s labels feature supports this consistency by allowing teams to categorize and organize their meeting documents, making it easy to locate and reference past agendas and meeting notes.

Use Confluence for meeting agendas

Effective team meetings are essential for team collaboration and workplace productivity . By leveraging Confluence’s powerful features, teams can streamline their decision-making process , foster knowledge sharing , and drive project collaboration through well-structured meeting agendas.

In other words, Confluence brings everyone together in a connected workspace to move projects forward. Confluence makes creating a project plan easy and allows teams to edit and share them in one place so everyone is on the same page.

Key features that make Confluence ideal for meeting agendas include: 

• Tables, tagging, and dates to structure and organize agenda items
• Action items that are easy to assign to people
• Decision trees to map out different paths and outcomes
• In-line comments and @mentions to gather input and feedback
• Templates to save time and ensure consistency across meetings
• Labels to keep all meeting documents and notes organized.

In addition, Confluence offers a variety of pre-formatted meeting agenda templates, including:

• 1-1 meeting agenda template
• Weekly meeting notes template
• All hands meeting agenda template
• Remote team meeting agenda template
• Workshop meeting agenda template
• Brainstorming meeting agenda template
• Problem-solving meeting agenda template

Make a meeting agenda in Confluence for free

How to use a meeting agenda template

Determine the meeting type.

Identifying the type of meeting, such as a 1-on-1 meeting, all-hands meeting, or a project review meeting, helps tailor the agenda to meet the specific needs and objectives of the meeting, ensuring relevance and effectiveness.

Customize your Confluence meeting agenda template based on the meeting type, or use one of the pre-formatted templates.

List the meeting objectives

Clearly defining the meeting’s objectives or goals provides direction and focus for the agenda, outlining the outcomes or decisions the discussions should produce.

State the key objectives at the top of your meeting agenda template in Confluence.

Outline the agenda items

Listing the topics or agenda items based on priority or relevance to the meeting objectives ensures a well-structured agenda that facilitates productive discussions.

Use Confluence’s flexible page layouts to outline and organize your agenda items.

Allocate time for each item

Assigning specific durations for discussing each agenda item keeps the meeting on schedule and ensures the participants adequately address all the topics within the allocated time frame, preventing unnecessary delays.

Employ Confluence’s table formats or timeline macros to allocate time blocks for each agenda item.

Assign responsibilities

Specifying the roles and responsibilities of meeting participants ensures smooth facilitation and coordination during the meeting, maximizing efficiency and workplace productivity.

Tag the relevant team members using @mentions in your Confluence meeting agenda and assign action items.

Distribute the agenda

Sharing the finalized meeting agenda with all participants before the scheduled meeting time ensures that everyone is informed and adequately prepared for the discussions, maximizing participation and engagement.

Use Confluence’s sharing and notification features to distribute the agenda to all attendees.

Related templates and resources

Meeting notes.

The meeting notes template records discussions, decisions, and action items for reference and accountability.

Weekly meeting notes

The weekly meeting notes template keeps teams aligned by providing a structured space to record meeting dates, attendees, agenda items, decisions, and action items.

All hands meeting

The all-hands meeting template helps bring the entire department or company together to share business updates, victories, employee spotlights, and more.

Ready to make a meeting agenda?

Republicans vow to upend Dem-led Senate after Trump's guilty verdict

R epublican senators signed a public letter to the White House on Friday, vowing to prevent the upper chamber from accomplishing anything – from appropriations to confirmations – in the wake of former President Trump's guilty verdict. 

"As a Senate Republican conference, we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart," read a letter led by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. 

On Thursday, Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying documents to cover up payments made to former porn star Stormy Daniels, a woman with whom he allegedly had an affair in 2006.

SCHUMER URGES TRUMP ALLIES TO LET LEGAL PROCESS 'MOVE FORWARD' AFTER GUILTY VERDICT

The lawmakers laid out that they will no longer allow the Senate to run smoothly, by confirming President Biden’s nominees or allowing Congress to move forward with funding for the next fiscal year.

"Strongly worded statements are not enough. Those who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable. We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand," Lee announced on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

'BOOM': DEMOCRATS CELEBRATE TRUMP GUILTY VERDICT AS BIDEN WEIGHS REMAINING THREAT

Sens. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Rick Scott, R-Fla., Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla. joined Lee in stating they will refuse to allow any increases for funding that are unrelated to security. 

The senators further claimed they wouldn't allow "any appropriations bill which funds partisan lawfare." 

'ELECTION INTERFERENCE' CLAIMS MUDDY BATTLEGROUND STATE POLITICS AMID COMPETITIVE RACES

No political or judicial nominees proposed by Biden will receive their votes for confirmation either, they wrote. 

Lastly, the Republicans said they won't allow any "expedited consideration and passage of Democrat legislation or authorities that are not directly relevant to the safety of the American people." This plan, if adhered to, would force Democrats to go through regular order to pursue legislative priorities, which can take a long time. The Senate relies on the common use of unanimous consent requests to expedite these processes. 

Two of the signatories, Vance and Rubio, are being speculated as potential running mates for Trump as the Republican National Convention draws near. 

SPEAKER JOHNSON PLANS TO INVITE ISRAEL'S NETANYAHU TO MEET WITH CONGRESS SOONER RATHER THAN LATER

Scott is notably running for the position of Republican Senate Leader, vying to replace outgoing Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Congress will need to pass appropriations bills or a stopgap funding bill before the start of the next fiscal year in October, otherwise the government will shut down ahead of the November election. 

Neither the White House nor the office of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., responded to inquires for purposes of this story in time for publication. 

Original article source: Republicans vow to upend Dem-led Senate after Trump's guilty verdict

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PepsiCo Positive

We’re charting a new course to drive positive action for the planet and people

A better food system means better outcomes for the earth, and all of us..

By becoming better ourselves, we can help build a stronger, more sustainable future for us all.

and inspire positive change for the planet and people.

This is pep+ (PepsiCo Positive).

We’re working to source our crops & ingredients in ways that restore the earth and strengthen farming communities.

Positive Agriculture

We’re working to source our crops & ingredients in ways that restore the earth and strengthen farming communities..

• We’re aiming to sustainably source 100% of our key crops and ingredients by 2030 — not only direct-sourced crops like potatoes and oats but also key crops from third parties such as vegetable oils and grains.
• We’ve strengthened our Global Policy on Sustainable Palm Oil, which includes strict commitments to avoiding deforestation, development on peat and exploitation of the rights of indigenous peoples, workers and local communities.
• We aim to improve the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in our global agricultural supply chain and communities by 2030, with a focus on economically empowering women.
• Learn more about Positive Agriculture .

We’re helping to build a circular < title style = "color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" > 1 - Atoms / icons / minus / white@3x and inclusive value chain < title style = "color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" > 1 - Atoms / icons / minus / white@3x

More about Positive Value Chain +

Positive Value Chain

We’re helping build a circular and inclusive value chain..

• We aim to provide meaningful jobs and growth opportunities for our associates, advancing our education and learning offerings, giving increased access to degrees, vocational training, upskilling programs and new roles, supporting and equipping people with skills to advance at PepsiCo and boost their employability, both inside and outside the company.
• We’ve introduced a new global workforce volunteering program, One Smile at a Time, to encourage, support and empower our employees to make positive impacts in their local communities, offering the resources and time needed to pursue these efforts.
• We’ll work to advance human rights and diversity, equity and inclusion for our people, in our business partnerships and our communities, thereby contributing to a better workplace and world. That means continuing to make progress against our Women’s goals and promoting fair and safe working conditions, advancing respect for human rights everywhere we operate, providing access to safe water and advancing food security.

We’re inspiring people through our brands to make choices that create more smiles for them and the planet.

More about Positive Choices +

Positive Choices

We’re inspiring people through our brands to make choices that create more smiles for them and the planet..

• Incorporating more diverse ingredients in both new and existing products that are better for the planet and/or deliver nutritional benefits, prioritizing chickpeas, plant-based proteins and whole grains.
• Expanding our position in the nuts and seeds category, where PepsiCo is already the global branded leader.
• Across our beverage portfolio, at least two-thirds of our drinks sales volume will have 100 Calories or less from added sugars, per 12 ounce serving.
• Across our foods portfolio, at least three-quarters of our foods sales volume will have 1.3 milligrams of sodium or less per Calorie.
• At least three-quarters of our foods portfolio sales volume will have 1.1 grams of saturated fat or less per 100 Calories.

Explore a comprehensive list of all our pep+ goals →

See how our brands are driving positive change.

Driving positive change

Pepsi and other beverage brands moving to 100% recycled plastic bottles in the u.s. and europe.

are expected to move to 100% recycled plastic (rPET) bottles by 2030, with Pepsi Zero Sugar beginning to be sold in 100% rPET bottles by 2022. Pepsi is celebrating this important shift with a new consumer-centric platform driving recycling awareness, education and advocacy. PepsiCo estimates that moving to 100% rPET will lower greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 30% per bottle. 

are expected to move to 100% rPET by 2022 in 11 European markets. In several European countries, the plan goes beyond Pepsi brands: France, Great Britain, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg will include 7UP, Mountain Dew and Lipton Ice Tea. Poland and Romania will also use 100% rPET for Mirinda, and Denmark and Finland will use it for 7UP and Mountain Dew.

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SodaStream offers sparkling beverages without single-use packaging

The largest sparkling water brand in the world by volume, SodaStream is sold in more than 40 countries with flavor options such as Pepsi Zero Sugar, Lipton and bubly in 23 markets. A new SodaStream Professional platform will expand into functional beverages and reach more than 10 additional markets by the end of 2022 — part of the brand’s effort to help consumers avoid more than 200 billion plastic bottles by 2030.

Doritos celebrates LGBTQ+ voices

In celebration of Pride Month in June 2021, Doritos teams in Mexico and Brazil launched a trio of campaigns for DORITOS® Rainbow, a platform championing the LGBTQ+ community and their families for 5+ years:

• Brazilian singer, songwriter and drag queen Gloria Groove gave George Michael’s iconic song “Freedom” her own spin with “Freedom por Gloria Groove.” The campaign embodies the notion that being yourself represents strength, love and yes, freedom.
• In a moving short film titled “ Happy Mother’s Day to All Moms ,” Doritos showcased six kids from two LGBTQ+ families reading letters to their moms, thanking them for being strong support systems. It’s part of the initiative #OrgulloTodoelAño (Pride All Year).
• In “ Pride Is Shared as a Family ,” Doritos highlighted two influencers telling their families about their sexual orientation, emphasizing the importance of family and friends’ support when discovering who you are.

Lay’s campaign features farmers and sustainable agriculture

In 2021, Lay’s launched its “Farm to Pack” initiative showcasing the individual farmers and local, sustainably sourced origins behind Lay’s potato chips in a series of short films.

The program also features special packaging with a QR code that allows consumers to trace the path of the Lay’s potatoes in each bag and learn more about the potato farmer responsible for growing the crop before it became chips.

Brazil, one of the first markets to introduce the program, debuted a short film called, “From the field to the package in up to 48 hours,” highlighting the journey potatoes take from the field to arrival on the shelves, as well as the farmer’s role in planting, harvesting and selecting the potatoes.

In addition to Brazil, the program was launched in Russia, Turkey and Mexico, with plans to reach over 10 markets across LATAM, Europe and North America in 2022.

Off The Eaten Path debuts compostable bags

PepsiCo has been investing in breakthrough food packaging technology and is introducing a full compostable bag made with plant-based materials. Starting with Off The Eaten Path, one of Frito-Lay’s plant-based brands, this industrially compostable packaging will be available to consumers in the U.S. at Whole Foods stores. Producing the materials for these bags creates 60% less greenhouse gas emissions than traditional packaging and eliminates waste to landfill. PepsiCo has also announced that it plans to license this technology to other companies at no cost.

Walkers finds a creative way to repurpose potato waste

Potato peel waste from the spuds used to make Walkers crisps is being transformed into low-carbon fertilizer, in partnership with British clean-tech firm CCm Technologies. The fertilizer is being tested in farms across the U.K. Once it’s rolled out at scale, it’s expected to reduce Walkers’ potato-based carbon emissions by an estimated 70% (against a 2019 baseline). By turning potato waste into a reusable resource, Walkers is driving more circularity in the potato growing process and helping farmers reduce their impact on the environment.

Aquafina’s new sustainable packaging for EXPO 2020

In May 2021, Aquafina announced it would be available in sustainable aluminum cans and glass bottles for global visitors attending EXPO 2020 Dubai, which kicks off in October 2021. As the Official Beverage and Snack Partner for EXPO 2020 Dubai, PepsiCo will work closely with Dulsco — EXPO’s Official Waste Management Partner — to ensure packaging from PepsiCo’s products is collected and recycled, supporting EXPO’s target of diverting a minimum of 85% of waste away from landfills.

PepsiCo has added further momentum by inviting its partners, customers and their respective consumers to join Aquafina’s Say Yes challenge, encouraging participants to choose sustainable packaging and promote recycling efforts. Additionally, PepsiCo is aiming to recycle the equivalent of 100% of Aquafina plastic packaging produced in the UAE in 2021.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by PepsiCoArabia (@pepsicoarabia)

Learn how PepsiCo associates are making our pep+ ambitions a reality​

Get a glimpse at how Mariana Martino is cooking up new ways to offer consumers Positive Choices for the planet and people.​

Anchalee Surapanpairoge is leading the Journey to Zero Waste Project in Thailand – an initiative to collect and repurpose packaging.​

With She Works Wonders, Walaa Faheem is opening doors for women to enter fields that have been previously dominated by men.​

Manpreet Singh Nayyar is leading water conservation efforts that make the company more sustainable and improve local communities.​

Our ESG Summary

This report shows how we made progress toward our pep+ goals to help build a more sustainable food system.

Learn more about how we’re making a difference

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What to Know About Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s Newly Elected President

Here are five key insights into Mexico’s new president as people wonder whether she will diverge from Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policies or focus on cementing his legacy.

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By Natalie Kitroeff

Reporting from Mexico City

Claudia Sheinbaum’s list of accolades is long: She has a Ph.D in energy engineering, participated in a United Nations panel of climate scientists awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and governed the capital, one of the largest cities in the hemisphere.

On Sunday, she added another achievement to her résumé: becoming the first woman elected president of Mexico.

Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, captured at least 58 percent of the vote in a landmark election on Sunday that featured two women competing for the nation’s highest office — a groundbreaking contest in a country long known for a culture of machismo and rampant violence against women.

Mexico Election Results: Sheinbaum Wins

See results and maps for Mexico’s 2024 presidential election.

“For the first time in 200 years of the republic, I will become the first female president of Mexico,” she said. “And as I have said on other occasions, I do not arrive alone. We all arrived, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters.”

Now that she has clinched the presidency, Ms. Sheinbaum’s next hurdle will be stepping out of the shadow of her predecessor and longtime mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the outgoing president.

She and Mr. López Obrador are “different people,” she said in an interview. He’s an oilman who invested in environmentally questionable projects; she’s a climate scientist. Yet Ms. Sheinbaum has appealed to voters mainly by promising to cement his legacy, backing moves like his big bet on the national oil company and proposed constitutional changes that critics call antidemocratic.

Their alliance has also left many Mexicans asking: Can Ms. Sheinbaum be her own leader? Or will she just be his pawn?

“There’s this idea, because a lot of columnists say it, that I don’t have a personality,” Ms. Sheinbaum complained to reporters earlier this year. “That President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tells me what to do.”

She insists she will govern independently from Mr. López Obrador and has some different priorities. But veering too far from his agenda could be very risky.

Here are five things to know about the newly elected president of Mexico that help inform whether she will stray from Mr. López Obrador’s policies or dedicate herself to cementing his legacy.

1. Sheinbaum will inherit a host of challenges.

A former ballet dancer, Ms. Sheinbaum calls herself “obsessive” and “disciplined.” But discipline may not be enough, analysts say.

As president, she already stands to inherit a long list of troubles. The state-owned oil company is buckling under debt, migration through the country has reached historical highs and cartel violence continues to torment the country.

She has said she would continue Mr. López Obrador’s policy of addressing the drivers of violence instead of waging war on the criminal groups, but will also work to lower rates of impunity and build up the national guard.

With a U.S. presidential election just months away, she told The New York Times that she was prepared to work with whichever candidate wins. Publicly, she has echoed Mr. López Obrador’s emphasis on tackling migration by addressing its root causes.

In a hint of potential change, she said in a recent debate that she would seek to reform the c ountry’s migration authority , an agency often accused of corruption.

2. She’s seen as reserved, even aloof.

The Times spoke with two dozen people who have worked with or know Ms. Sheinbaum and also visited campaign events, reviewed her writings and her media appearances and interviewed her, once in 2020 and again this year.

What became clear is that Ms. Sheinbaum, (pronounced SHANE-balm), has long seemed more comfortable quietly getting things done than selling herself or her achievements.

The granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who fled Europe, she rarely discusses being Jewish or almost anything about her personal life, colleagues say. When interviewers ask her about the Nobel Prize she shared with a panel of climate researchers, she notes how many others were involved in the work.

She is known as a tough boss with a quick temper who can inspire in her staff fear and adoration at the same time. Publicly, though, her affect is so controlled it verges on aloof.

Some say her professorial demeanor could pose a challenge in a political landscape defined by Mr. López Obrador, who built his party into a juggernaut by relying on the force of his personality.

“She needs him,” said Carlos Heredia, a Mexican political analyst. “She doesn’t have the charisma, she doesn’t have the popularity, she doesn’t have the political stamina of her own, so she needs to borrow that from López Obrador.”

For some Mexicans, however, a thrills-free woman may be an ideal antidote to an entertaining man who plunged the country into partisan turmoil.

3. She’s long sought to keep Mr. López Obrador happy.

The candidate’s political career began when Mr. López Obrador was elected mayor of Mexico City in 2000 and invited her to a meeting at a diner. “What I want is to reduce pollution,” she recalled Mr. López Obrador telling her. “Do you know how to do that?”

Ms. Sheinbaum, who by then had written more than a dozen reports on energy use and carbon emissions, said yes. She became his environment minister. In meetings, she seemed willing to do almost anything to make her boss happy, according to several people who worked with her.

“The phrase she used over and over again was ‘The mayor said to,’” said Mr. Heredia, who worked with her in city government under Mr. López Obrador. What that meant, according to Mr. Heredia: “We are not a cabinet for giving ideas,” he said. “We are a group of people here to execute what he decides.”

In the years that followed, Ms. Sheinbaum straddled academia and politics, but she always stayed close to Mr. López Obrador. When he founded his Morena party in 2014, he asked her to run on the party’s ticket to become mayor of Tlalpan, a borough of Mexico City. With his backing, she won.

4. She is known for being a demanding boss.

In 2018, Mr. López Obrador was swept into the presidency in a landslide and Ms. Sheinbaum became Mexico City’s mayor. She quickly gained a reputation as an exacting boss.

“One doesn’t go to her meetings to tell her, ‘I’m working on it,’” said Soledad Aragón, a former member of Ms. Sheinbaum’s cabinet. When she walked into a room, Ms. Aragón said, everyone sat up straight.

As mayor, she could remember specific numbers mentioned in a meeting weeks after it occurred, Ms. Aragón said, calling her “brilliant” and “demanding,” especially of herself, adding: “It has gotten results.”

Five officials who have worked with Ms. Sheinbaum, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said that she was quick to anger at times and would yell at her subordinates in front of large groups. Through a spokesman, Ms. Sheinbaum declined to comment on the accusation.

Her defenders say some people merely reacted badly to a woman in charge.

“I know that in her government, sometimes people got offended or felt bad because she yelled at them,” said Marta Lamas, a longtime feminist activist who has been close to Ms. Sheinbaum and her team. “But if a man yells, it wouldn’t be an issue because culturally, it’s different.”

“People say it in a critical way: ‘She’s tough,’” Ms. Aragón said. “What do you want, someone soft in charge of the city?”

5. She is a true believer in Mr. López Obrador’s vision.

For years, Ms. Sheinbaum has tried to explain how she can be so in step with Mr. López Obrador while also being herself. The answer, she says, is simple: She genuinely believes in him.

In 2022, a radio host asked her a pointed question from a female listener: “Why don’t you choose to be a woman who governs with her own ideas? Why don’t you get out of AMLO’s circus?” she asked, using Mr. López Obrador’s nickname. “Why have the same rhetoric with the same words?”

Ms. Sheinbaum didn’t hesitate.

“If you think the same as another person, it’s not that you’re copying them; you just agree with the ideas,” she said. “You can’t deny what you believe.”

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.

Natalie Kitroeff is the Mexico City bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. More about Natalie Kitroeff

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