Business Profile

Basics of Meetings

Business people spend quite a lot of time in meetings, and meetings come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from formal committee meetings to informal one-to-one meetings.

There are several reasons why meetings are held:

reaching decisions in a meeting means that all the participants can feel more committed to the decision;
information is available to more people;
different and unexpected ideas can be contributed;
meetings can lead to more imaginative and informed decisions — often more courageous decisions than one person might feel brave enough to make.

Some of the drawbacks of meetings are:

more time is required than if one person made the decisions;
there's more talk (and this is sometimes irrelevant and repetitive);
there's more group pressure.

The way a committee operates often depends on the chairperson: he or she may control the proceedings very strictly, or let everyone speak whenever they want. An effective chairperson should be flexible. In some committee meetings the members have to take a vote before a decision can be made: formal proposals of "motions" may have to be tabled, seconded (endorsed) and discussed before a vote can be taken. Other meetings may require a consensus of the members: everyone agrees with the decision — or at least no one disagrees.

Most meetings have an agenda. For a formal meeting, this document is usually circulated in advance to all participants. For an informal meeting, the agenda may be simply a list of the points that have to be dealt with.

The purpose of an agenda is to speed up the meeting and keep everyone to the point. The agenda for a formal meeting must be organised in logical order.

Often the agenda shows not only the topics but the meeting's function regarding each topic ("to receive ... ", "to report on ... ", "to confirm ... ", "to approve ... ", etc.). All items on which a decision is to be taken should appear on the agenda.

Taking minutes, and writing them up later, is of great importance. Minutes usually report details of the time, date and duration of the meeting and the names of those present, but the content of the report itself may be detailed or brief, depending on the anticipated readership.

Sample Board of Directors Meeting Agenda

(Name of Agency)

(Month, Day, Year)

(Location)

(Planned Starting Time to Ending Time)

Activity	Action
Minutes from Previous Meeting	Approval
Chief Executive's Report	Discussion
Finance Committee's Report	Approval of Budget Changes
Development Committee's Report (nonprofit)	Approval of Fundraising Plan
Board Development Committee	Approval of Plans for Retreat
Other Business — Old — New — Announcements Round-table Evaluation of Meeting Review of Actions from Meeting Adjourn

Sample of the Minutes of a Management Meeting

(Name of Organisation)

(Month, Day, Year)

(Time and Location)

Present: David Brown, Alex Lee, Tina Johnson, Anna M. Swanson

Proceedings:

Tina: report on overtime work. Agreed: need to reduce amount of overtime work.
Alex: People are missing deadlines.
David: absenteeism and lateness are problems in some plants. David to review absenteeism / lateness policies with plant managers.
Anna to work out realistic targets and propose deadlines to achieve them.
Other business: Tina announced that she had recently hired a new secretary, Karla Baldini.

Meeting adjourned at 11:00.

Minutes submitted by: Secretary, Betty Bergman.