When you are planning a meeting, the first question to address is, “What are you trying to accomplish?” At the end of the time, what do you want people to do? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to walk away with?

Once you have a good answer for that, you can design the meeting more effectively. What decisions need to be made? What information do you need to present? What motivation do you need to tap into? What process do you need to lay out for people to follow? What do we need to do to keep that process on track? What next steps do you need to provide? Who might you need to pre-process before the meeting?

Often our meetings aren’t very good because we’re not clear on what we really want people to walk away with. If you know what results you want, you can know if you’re successful?