Agenda: The Unsung Hero of Productive and Efficient Sessions

Preparing a session Agenda beforehand may seem like a waste of time, but it does the exact opposite. It’s a potent tool that is proven to make meetings, be they online, offline or hybrid, efficient and productive.

Studies show (and our community confirms) that the most frequent cause of unproductive meetings is the lack of an Agenda, while its presence gives your meeting structure, functioning as a matrix for your sessions.

As a result of a co-creation process between our community and us, Takeaways was born. This is one of our built-in tools which allows you to write down the meeting’s minutes as you go, and everyone receives them at the end.

These tools and integrations are available in Sessions to use on their own or as a part of an agenda.

It’s easy to get lost in meetings, especially when developing solutions or discussing improvements for internal processes.

A typical agenda ensures you break down the meeting into sections, making the end goal seem more achievable. Sessions’ agenda does that and more: besides planning your session in detail, it allows you to assign durations for each part of your meeting. This power feature is optional, but you should consider using it. Adding time dependency to your Agenda ensures you’re always on track. When the designated time for an Agenda item runs out, the platform will notify you.

Sometimes being spontaneous is welcomed, but most often than not, especially in a professional environment, planning proves to be more profitable and beneficial for the business and team.

Agenda brings structure and clarity to your meeting for you and your participants. People know what to expect, when to expect it, and prepare if required.

Planning the Agenda in advance, adding durations for each item on the list and also sharing it with your team ensures your meetings will also be on time and on point.

As much as we’d like to anticipate everything, some situations and needs can’t be predicted.

One great thing about the Sessions’ Agenda is its capacity to adapt: you can edit it before or at any point during the meeting. Something unexpected appears? No worries, you can always customize the Agenda on the spot to fit your needs.

While having an Agenda is optional, we strongly recommend using one. It ensures you don’t lose sight of the big picture or waste time in unproductive meetings. It also guarantees that all the tools and resources you want are ready exactly when needed in the discussion.

You can create an Agenda before a meeting when you know exactly how it will happen. You can add it before a meeting (in Lobby) or during a session. You create it once and reuse it whenever you decide to.

But don’t forget, you can also create an agenda from scratch in a live meeting on the fly.

… the Agenda is arguably the most relevant component of an effective meeting. And as it promises, Sessions is a one-in-all toolbox that empowers collaboration through its interactive Agenda.

Sessions agendas are more flexible, adaptable and customizable than ever. From introducing an agenda during a live session and later on detaching it, to adding new items or deleting others, it’s entirely up to you how you design the meeting!

Give it a try!