13+ Sample Meeting Action Plan

What Is a Meeting Action Plan?

An Action Plan is a basic outline of all the activities that must be completed in order to achieve a goal. They are distinct from To-Do Lists in that they are focused on achieving a particular objective. Meeting action plans are beneficial because they provide a framework for considering how to finish a project efficiently. They assist you in completing things in a logical order and ensuring that you do not overlook any important details within a meeting. You may also rapidly select which task is necessary to outsource or mention first, as well as which task you will be able to put for last because you can visualize which is more important than the rest.

What Should Be On a Meeting Action Plan?

Even though meetings have a more or less similar structure, the topic you include in your committee meeting Agenda is determined by the meeting’s aim. There are available meeting action plan samples prepared for you to use as a reference and a guide in writing your own. You would not have to worry over the hassle of starting from scratch as the templates are varied and you are free to choose whichever suits your preference. But regardless of whether your meeting is a brainstorming session or a quarterly review, most agendas contain the following items:

Information items: This item is all about any new information you would like to share with the group. Involving updates or corrections for the specific topics that the agenda aims to address and discuss. As well as the statements or reports of other team members who are giving their own share of information to the meeting whether it is an update in the department they are in or a completed report of the task that was assigned to them.Action items: Whether you are involved in a project or not, certain higherups will be giving you tasks that you would need to accomplish prior to or after the meeting is held. During the discussion, the action plan for the meeting may hand out duties and tasks for each participant to accomplish within a certain time frame. As the facilitator, it is your own task to clarify that whoever will be receiving the specific task, has no further questions in the action that they will be doing otherwise it could be a problem in the future. Clearly stating which category each agenda item belongs to will assist your team in providing the specific input that is required of them.Discussion items: Any good facilitator will make sure to include a segment in the meeting to hear suggestions across the table and open up topics for questions and clarifications. These items are topics that you open to the table to receive feedback on. Whether it is positive or negative, you also have to keep an open mind in answering their inquiries and navigate their confusion to a clearer understanding of the main point of the meeting.

How to Write a Meeting Action Plan

You may think writing a meeting agenda appears to be a simple and easy process, but that is not always the case. If an Office Action Plan is thrown together in a hurry and rushed the night before a meeting, could end up becoming too imprecise or unstructured which could defeat the purpose and be of no use. A meeting preparation action plan needs to be thoroughly crafted so that it will serve its purpose in the team meeting as well as be useful in delivering topics that should be discussed. Here are some pointers on how to put together a productive agenda for your next meeting:

Step 1: Make the meeting’s goals apparent

Give a high-level summary of the meeting’s topics without getting into particular agenda items.  The more clarity you can provide about the meeting’s objectives, the more likely you are to reach them sooner. You can ask yourself or physically list out questions that can help you bring closer to identifying the meeting’s primary goal. It is important to note what are the meeting’s goals in order to have a justifiable discussion and endpoint.

Step 2: Clarify the agenda items

Avoid ambiguous agenda items by stating the discussion’s aim right away, don’t do segways or exaggerations as that will not be appreciated and is a waste of time in the eyes of the higher-ups, supervisors, or attending members of the company.  If you want to discuss a suggestion with your team for the following quarter’s sales objectives, for example, describe what you want to learn. Including supporting questions or assignments is an excellent approach to do this.

Step 3: Expectations and obligations should be made clear

Do you want your meeting attendees to make any preparations ahead of time? Who is in charge of which subject? If you want someone on your team to provide context for a topic or explain some statistics, let them know ahead of time and give them time to prepare instead of putting them on the spot during the meeting. Informing them ahead of time will not only help make a better transition or smooth process of discussion during the meeting but also prevent anyone from being surprised at the flow of the meeting or their mandatory presence to speak up.

Step 4: Calculate for a reasonable amount of time

One of the most typical blunders is overcrowding your meeting agenda and underestimating the amount of time it will take to go over everything. If you want the conversations to be important and not hurried, try to be realistic. Consider how long it will take to explain the issue, respond to inquiries, assess potential solutions, and agree on the next steps. And if you have team members who need to do their fair share of discussing certain points, then you should allocate ample time for them to duly report on their assigned topic as well or inform them of the preferred time you have scheduled for them. No one wants a rushed meeting nor one that is lengthy and goes overtime.

Step 5: Accept feedback

If you want your staff to be interested throughout the meeting, ask for comments and include their topic recommendations in the agenda. Many document collaboration solutions make it simple to share comments with your coworkers. Make sure that the topic and relevant subjects have been covered and all attendees are related to it. As well as no topic was left undiscussed and no concern left. You can send out the Feedback Form for your team members to fill out of how the meeting went and take note and ponder if applying their suggestions will improve the next meeting.

Different Components of a Meeting Action Plan

A meeting action plan is not the place to cut corners. As tempting as it is to do a fully digital transition of important office documents, the creation and distribution of a hard copy at meetings are so important that you may find it necessary to produce additional copies to give when meeting in person and re-send a copy of only the agenda when meeting online. Consider an agenda to be similar to a road map you would use to plan a journey; the components are the same, and you will need to know the following details. Stutzman of Tough Nickel elaborates on five effective components for an agenda.

The Agenda Header: The header’s main purpose is for readers or employees to immediately be able to identify the rest of the content of the document. It includes the responsible individual for calling the Meeting, the involved group that is present in the meeting, the date and time of the meeting both the start and end, and lastly the location of the meeting. This header information not only serves as a credible document to notify employees to go to the meeting but it serves as creating an organizational archive to declare that the meeting took place on the specified date, time, and location, relieving all participants of the burden of having to remember or try to recall when they decided to do something when questioned.The Objective of the Meeting: This refers to answering the main questions as to why a meeting is held in the first place and what is the end goal of such meeting. You need to state at the beginning of the meeting action plan the main purpose of why the Meeting needs to occur. Identify whether or not it would be a scheduled monthly meeting or only for a particular event, issue, or specific topic. The facilitator and other participants will be able to redirect a discourse that has devolved to another issue if the meeting’s purpose is mentioned on the agenda. It’s a good practice to read the meeting’s purpose and mission statement before the meeting starts as an acknowledgment that you are serious about what you want to accomplish and that you have a plan.The Meeting Work Plan: This includes a list of what has to be completed during the meeting, with the most time-sensitive items listed first, followed by the most contentious or time-consuming items, then the less sensitive and low-impact items, and finally the least important topic. There is no reason why a well-thought-out agenda or a hectic one cannot be completed in one hour. Not only is one hour the most amount of time that most individuals can contribute or spend on a single cause, but the attention spans are limited. If all of these aspects are used, Effective Meetings with very fruitful outcomes in one hour are not only conceivable but the norm.Keep Track of Time: It’s a basic matter of respect to allocate and keep time, including starting and terminating on time. Meetings that start and end on time show to the participants that you respect and value their time. Regardless of the circumstances, begin and conclude on time. If not everyone is there, do not loop around to remind them of what they missed; this is their duty. When a meeting is about to finish and there is still a lot to be done, poll the group to see if there is anything that has to be done before the meeting ends and move it to the top of the conversation; everything else may go in a written report form or wait until the next meeting. Give out reports and reading assignments ahead of time so that you don’t waste time reading and preparing for meetings. If someone else needs additional time, negotiate with others who are scheduled to report about how much time they need. People will come and participate in meetings that you facilitate if you have a reputation for starting and concluding on time, as well as limiting the time allotted to get down to Business.Responding to Emerging Urgent and Critical Issues: A major emergency may inevitably happen during a meeting, and planning for it in the agenda is vital to having a successful and productive meeting. Someone who comes off as arrogant wants to testify to their knowledge, or make an impassioned plea about something unrelated to the issue, or over a long period of time. As a flexible facilitator, you would need to steer the discussion back to the point of the meeting and away from the irrelevant topic.

These 5 important aspects for designing a successful roadmap can help take you to your end destination: a meeting where everyone feels respected, heard, and engaged, whether you are facilitating meetings or participating in them. This may be accomplished by first creating the agenda, then disseminating it, and then following the steps outlined; the results will be immediate, and you will immediately see an increase in attendance and engagement. If you find yourself in the middle of an unnecessary gathering, break it up and immediately create an agenda to avoid it from devolving into a gossip fest, unless it’s a brainstorming session, which is another thing entirely.

FAQs

What is the difference between a meeting action plan and a minutes meeting?

The agenda is a thorough description of the meeting’s order of the Event; it is a statement that contains the topics that must be covered and serves useful to those in the higher position and other members since they will be informed of the topics to be covered ahead of the meeting, whereas the minutes are the meeting’s record of everything that was discussed and acts as a piece of important evidence and proof of the discussion that took place within the meeting.

How to check for a comprehensive meeting action plan?

You can use SCHEMES to double-check your action plan, which stands for space, cash, helpers, equipment, materials, expertise, and systems. You may not need to consider all of these in order to finish your project. For example, if you are working on a modest internal project to simplify the structure of your team’s reports, you might only need to think about only a few of them and not all.

What are the different types of action plans?

Regardless if you are the facilitator or just the one who is tasked with writing a meeting action plan, ensuring a smooth meeting will be appreciated by not just the bosses of the workplace but also fellow employees for not wasting both of their time. Of course, it may not be possible to avoid errors, mistakes, or hiccups in a meeting, but writing a meeting action plan can at least help lessen it or even help you or the facilitator to address it with ease. This is why our examples of meeting action plans will be useful to you as you prepare for that meeting.