9 Tips to Organize an Effective Meeting

This video shows 9 Tips to organize an effective meeting that will help you to organize effective as well as productive meeting in your organization.

Tip#1 Prepare Good Agenda
Tip#2 Circulate the Notice in Time
Tip#3 Prepare a Checklist
Tip#4 Prepare a Working Paper of the Meeting
Tip#5 Prepare a Folder for the Meeting
Tip#6 Check Equipment and Meeting Room
Tip#7 Keep Meeting Brief
Tip#8 Prepare Meeting Minutes
Tip#9 Follow up the meeting.
Tip#1 Prepare Good Agenda
Every meeting has a purpose. To fulfill the purpose of the meeting, you should first fix the agenda of the meeting. It helps to outline the meeting in timely and logical manner and presents the focus area. It also helps participants plan and prepare to make an effective contribution in the meeting.
Tip#2 Circulate the Notice in Time
The notice of the meeting should be distributed to the appropriate persons to get the right decisions and to make the meeting fruitful. You should send the notice at least three days prior to the meeting.
After circulating the notice, you should communicate the members of the meeting properly whether they have received the notice and will be present in the meeting. You should also give a reminder prior to the meeting through email or SMS. If needed, they could be contacted over phone again.
If for any reason, meeting is postponed, you should communicate with the members just after the decision by formal letter or email or SMS.
Tip#3 Prepare a Checklist
You should prepare a checklist including the tasks to be completed, time frame and responsible persons. Please monitor the checklist, take necessary action and update it regularly.
Tip#4 Prepare a Working Paper of the Meeting
You should prepare a working paper on each agenda item, defining the problem, providing a brief historical background, lines of development and specific proposal for action. It should be presented before the members of the meeting so that discussions go as on specific agenda. Some information could be provided as attachment, if necessary. You should also make sure that relevant files and supporting documents which are not included in the working paper are with you so that you could provide further explanation, if needed.

Tip#5 Prepare a Folder for the Meeting
You should provide a folder in the meeting so that the members of the meeting can easily get information relevant to the meeting, take notes and can easily carry all the meeting materials after the meeting. The folder of the meeting should contain pen, writing pad, working paper, last meeting minutes etc.

Tip#6 Check Equipment and Meeting Room
You should check all necessary equipment like computer, projector, sound recorder, pointer before the meeting whether they are working properly or not. Attendance sheet, honorarium sheet etc. should be ready before meeting.
Meeting room should be comfortable, neat and clean. There should be a wall clock in the meeting room. Please ensure sufficient lighting. If meeting requires white board, marker, flip chart etc. please arrange those things. Sometimes it needs to serve food and beverage as refreshment in the meeting room. Please make available such arrangement there.
Tip#7 Prepare Meeting Minutes

You should take notes on discussion and decisions of the meeting. You can use sound recorder to record the meeting. Minutes is an important element of the meeting because it is a tangible record of the meeting for its participants and act as a reference point.

You should include discussion and decision made about each agenda item, next steps planned, identification and tracking of action items in the minutes.
Minutes of the meeting should be prepared and finalized within 1 week and it should be distributed as early as possible to the participants for necessary action.
Tip#8 Keep Meetings Brief
The meeting should start just in time and it needs to be short, concise and to the point. Duration of the meeting depends. However, generally it should be between 30 minutes to1 hour. Some meetings like Annual General Meeting may require 3-4 hours. Those are exceptional. The meeting certainly should not longer than 90minutes. If it happens, then the people will lose focus and attention.

Tip#9 Follow up the meeting
There should be a mechanism to follow up the meeting. Without follow up, the meeting will go in vain, meaningless and unproductive. Don’t delay sending the follow-up letter or email after the meeting. Sending it as soon as you can displays that you valued the meeting. Sometimes, gentle reminder is required to remind about actions to be taken.