What’s on your agenda?

There is nothing worse than sitting through a meeting which drags on and on while achieving nothing.  Often, the meeting time is taken up arguing the finer points of minor issues, isn’t it?  Suddenly you find yourself at the end of the meeting and all the really important issues are either held over until the next meeting or discussed hurriedly and without real thought.  Either way, the meeting has been a waste of time.  Robin Hood would not let that happen in his meetings, would he?

The problem does not always lie with the chairperson’s meeting management skills.  Sometimes the agenda is the culprit.

The role of the agenda is crucial for guiding the meeting and ensuring it stays on track.

  • The agenda must relate to key purpose of your not for profit organisation and what it is trying to achieve.
  • It should only contain items of relevance and value, and focus on effective governance to ensure the ongoing viability of the organisation.
  • A well prepared agenda combined with effective chairing of the meeting will keep your meeting on track.  This can be particularly important if there are issues where there are clear differences of opinion or a board member tries to dominates the meeting to achieve their own outcome.

Another important element of a good agenda is that it should allow the board members to assess how the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is performing.  There should be time for the CEO to provide a report at each board meeting.  The committee can then be sure that the CEO’s performance is meeting the board’s expectations and check that motions from previous meeting have been acted on.

As an overarching principle, any agenda must relate to the achievement of the vision, mission and values of the organisation as reflected in the strategic plan.  The strategic plan will have clearly articulated strategic objectives that are linked to actions to be undertaken.  It will also have key performance indicators to measure the achievement of the strategic objectives.  These need to be reflected in the agenda.

If you give your chairperson a good agenda to work with, your meetings will be far more effective and you will be home at a reasonable hour!

In our next post we will look at how to prepare an agenda.