Meeting Agendas: Topic sequence

Some more thoughts on project team meeting agendas based on my observations of the project teams I currently work with:

When crafting the agenda you should anticipate topic sequence and flow. If your meeting is likely to last an hour or more, remember that energy levels and attention spans will diminish greatly toward the tail end of the hour. My observations during the past year indicate that the shortest-attention span persons pay attention in a meeting for less than 20 minutes before becoming fidgety, show wandering eyes indicating daydreaming, or allow themselves to be distracted by a Blackberry or their laptop, seeming to engage in another activity.

Consider setting topic sequence not by “importance”, but rather according to degree of participation required. Try to put any item that needs participative energy near the beginning of the agenda. Or, conversely, if you know your team well and know how to kick-start them, they might be inclined to do better listening earlier in the agenda (listening topics where they can be still, quiet and contemplative), and do better at talking later in the agenda (engaged topics where they can talk and move around and thus overcome fatigue). And if you exceed an hour, be sure to allow break time to recoup energy and take bio breaks.