Meeting preparation made easy

Well run meetings show you can manage groups and drive outcomes. They also save you unpleasant re-work. 
Good preparation enables good outcomes. 

5 simple guidelines to prepare a meeting:

1.  Use the 2:1 rule  The 2:1 rule says you should spend at least twice as long preparing for a meeting as you spend conducting it.  Preparation reduces the risk of your meeting going sideways and maximises the productivity of all involved in it. Use the preparation time to plan the agenda, gather input and feedback from stakeholders, develop materials, and complete steps 2-5.

2. Be clear on your meeting type and purpose.  Think about what the purpose of the meeting is and what success looks like.  Good meeting invites have the type and purpose clearly stated. Some meeting types:
 i.   Inform:  Our new expense reporting process.  (i.e.  no decision expected)
 ii.  Discovery: Expense Management (i.e. I’m going to ask you questions so I can learn practices and pain points)
 iii. Ideation: Expense Management (i.e. we are going to generate ideas together of how to solve for discovery pain points) 
 iv. Decision: Expense Management Process (i.e. I’m going to present a recommendation that we will agree to, amend or refute).

3. Provide context at least 24 hours in advance.  This gives people time to process information and reflect before the meeting.  They will arrive with better questions and better ideas and are much less likely to shoot from the hip.  There is an alternate approach, popularized by Amazon, where everyone reads the content at the start of the meeting.

4. Choose attendees purposefully.  There are multiple benefits.  
i. It helps clarify the role and responsibility of each attendee. E.g., if there is one functional representative they then represent the function (set an expectation for them to be the function voice). 
ii.  Meetings of smaller groups tend to be more productive and efficient. Ensuring you have the right attendees with the right authority simplifies your job of driving alignment.

5. Choose the right time.  There are lots of factors that play into this. The key is to understand your audience and set the conditions to maximize success.  I had one leader that liked to pontificate and to stay late, so we would always schedule meetings at 4pm so we could run over and, over time, bring him to our viewpoint.  I had an executive that disliked ad-hoc discussion, so despite the fact we sat 20 feet apart, I would always schedule meetings multiple days out.