Simple meeting agenda: the ten lines that make an hour worth it

A simple meeting agenda is a short list, sent in advance, of what the meeting will cover and what each item needs from the people in the room. It is roughly ten lines. It takes about three minutes to write, and it is the single largest difference between an hour that produces decisions and an hour that produces the feeling of having discussed something.

Almost everything written about agendas overcomplicates them. You do not need a template with fourteen fields. You need each item to say what it is, who is bringing it, how long it gets, and — the part that is nearly always missing — what has to come out of it.

What a simple meeting agenda contains

• The date, time and where — including the link, so nobody hunts for it two minutes late.
• One line saying why this meeting exists at all.
• Each item with an owner and a time allocation.
• For each item: decide, discuss or inform. One word, and it changes everything.
• Anything people need to read beforehand, linked rather than described.
• A last line for actions and owners, filled in during the meeting.

The decide / discuss / inform label does more work than the rest of the agenda combined. It tells people whether to arrive with an opinion, whether to prepare a position, or whether to simply listen — and it exposes the items that are on the list because they always are, with nothing to decide and nothing new to say.

Time allocations are a forecast, not a rule

Putting minutes against each item is not about enforcement. It is about arithmetic: six items in a thirty-minute meeting is a plan that cannot work, and writing the numbers down is what makes that visible before anyone sits down rather than at minute twenty-eight.

When an item overruns, the useful response is not to cut it off but to say out loud that it has taken the time meant for something else, and to decide which item now moves. That decision belongs to the group, and it takes ten seconds.

Sending it beforehand

An agenda revealed at the start of the meeting is a running order, not an agenda. Its purpose is to let people arrive prepared, which requires them to have seen it — a day ahead for a normal meeting, an hour for something quick.

1. Write the purpose line first. If it is hard to write, the meeting may not be needed.
2. List the items, each with an owner and a decide / discuss / inform label.
3. Assign minutes, then add them up and compare against the length of the meeting.
4. Cut or defer whatever does not fit, rather than hoping it will go faster.
5. Attach or link anything that must be read in advance.
6. Send it a day ahead and invite additions before the meeting, not during it.
7. During the meeting, write decisions and actions straight into the same document.

The agenda becomes the notes

The most practical habit here is to stop keeping the agenda and the minutes apart. Open the agenda in the meeting and type the outcome under each item as it is settled. By the end, the notes are written, they are structured the same way the discussion was, and nobody has to reconstruct anything from memory that evening.

Ettex Notes suits this because the same note can be shared with attendees before the meeting and edited during it, so the agenda sent yesterday is the document that holds the outcomes. Recurring meetings work by duplicating the previous note, which also carries the open actions forward without anyone maintaining a separate list.

It will not join calls, transcribe audio or produce a summary of what was said. Notes are typed by someone in the room. In practice that is less of a limitation than it sounds — a person deciding what mattered writes a better record than a transcript, which captures everything and therefore emphasises nothing.

Recurring meetings need pruning

Standing agendas accumulate items that once mattered. Every couple of months, take the recurring agenda and ask of each line whether a decision has come out of it recently. Items that only ever get the inform label are usually better as a written update, and removing two of them is often the difference between a meeting people prepare for and one they endure.

What goes wrong

• Sent at the start of the meeting, so nobody has prepared.
• Items with no owner, which means everyone waits for someone else to open them.
• No decide / discuss / inform label, so people cannot tell what is expected of them.
• Time allocations that add up to more than the meeting length.
• Any other business as a standing item, which is where the important thing surfaces with two minutes left.
• Agenda in one document and notes in another, so the connection between item and outcome is lost.
• Standing items nobody has questioned in a year.

Ten lines, sent a day early, each with an owner and one word saying what it needs. Then type the outcomes into the same document as you go.