It's just a meeting agenda...

"It's just a meeting agenda", not long ago this short phrase sparked my interest. I began to think about the impact of meeting agendas (or lack thereof) on my companies productivity. Meeting studies show 63% of American meetings are run without an agenda. So the question is whether the 63% of meetings without an agenda are just as productive as those with a plan? To shed some light on the question I turned to my most trusted source, past experience.

From time to time in the past I'm guilty of creating a meeting without an agenda. Mostly because I didn't want to take time and write the agenda out (adding 3 to 5 bullets to a meeting invite can be very hard). It's also possible that I was convinced my fellow attendees knew the purpose of the meeting. At any rate the decision was made to skip the agenda and save a couple minutes of real work time. Great news, I'm saving time without a meeting agenda! Now, what do I usually get in return for my 5 minute savings in time?

Typically, over the course of an hour meeting, I end up fighting a battle rather than conducting a discussion. The meeting seems to constantly get off track and never quite achieve the intended goal. Occasionally I've even wasted the time of an attendee or two that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Typically the end result is another meeting, a fresh start, a do-over. Right? Not quite, time moves in one direction and every minute has a price.

The price for this lost opportunity is both tangible and intangible. The tangible cost is calculated in hourly rates per employees in attendance (typically 6), not to mention the cost associated with planning and scheduling the meeting (remember the 5 minutes). Because I failed to plan properly, my wasted hour has cost 6 hours and 5 minutes of real time that will never be returned. Also, I need to reschedule and have the meeting again, that means more time.

Although harder to calculate, the intangible cost is the potential business value of a lost hour (for each attendee). This cost will vary but in the case of a subject-matter-expert it can be very expensive. The unproductive hour the SME has spent with me is an unproductive hour for everyone that needs the help of this resource (think of it like down time for a machine on a factory floor). The lack of an agenda has also lead me to mismanage the attendee list, I've wasted the time of unneeded resources (shut down another machine on the floor). Finally I must not forget the reason I called the meeting in the first place, to make a decision. Well that decision will have to wait until I get all of the attendee calendars to line up for another meeting. I don't have the energy to tackle this topic in depth but let’s just say the timeline is shot.

Ah, now it's time for the So what... . I've lost a minimum of 6 hours and 5 minutes of time, not to mention I will eat more time with another meeting on the same topic. Tied up valued human resources that will not be helping others or gaining progress on existing work. Pushed the timeline of a decision that will affect the business and made myself look unorganized and unprofessional in the process (or lack of a process). Not to mention really upset my boss.

It seems the 5 minutes I saved by not planning the meeting properly and communicating an agenda to the participants was no saving at all. On the upside, I now know what the cost of an agenda is to my business.

It pains me to think that 63% of the 3 billion meetings in America have no agenda. What a waste, what could we do with all that additional time...

2.0.6 Release – New features: Linking, Instant Meeting, Mark Private

As some of our users have noticed, LessMeeting released a new version yesterday. LessMeeting 2.0.6 includes a number of changes and improvements that our users have asked for. We are really exited about these features and would love to hear your feedback on them or other feature ideas you have.

Link Meetings

Many people have found that LessMeeting provides a lot of value in recurring meetings by keeping track of action items. We have now added the ability to link individual meetings together so that they function just like recurring meetings by tracking agenda items.


For example, if you have a preliminary meeting to discuss the FY11 budget on Monday and have a follow-up meeting on Friday, those two meetings can be linked. Any action items assigned to people on Monday will appear in the Friday meeting.


To link these two meetings, you would go to the meeting page of the Friday meeting and click the “Link” button in the Meeting History box on the bottom-right of the screen. The meetings that automatically appear in this box share common tags, but you can also search for any meeting by subject.

Create Instant Meeting from Website

On the Dashboard webpage you will notice that there’s a New Meeting button that allows you to create a meeting directly from the LessMeeting website. This means that if you don’t have Outlook available and need to schedule a meeting on the fly, you can do so directly from the website.

Notification Timing

We received feedback that the notifications popups were showing up too frequently (every time a meeting reminder appeared). Clicking the snooze button would cause the notification to appear multiple times for the same meeting. We have changed the notifications so now they only will appear if a reminder occurs less than 5 minutes prior to the meeting.

Private Meetings

We realize that not all events on your calendar are for work purposes. Clicking the Private button in Outlook before you create the meeting means that this meeting will not appear on the Dashboard or the Meetings page. It will also not appear in any Team data analytics.

The 35,000 Foot Meeting

We’re excited to announce the newest feature – the ability to attend and participate in meetings from 35,000 feet. Actually this isn’t a new feature, but it might be a first for LessMeeting.

I was recently traveling to a client-site meeting and it was one of those days where there were fires to put out all over the place. You know the feeling, right? I had two high priority afternoon calls scheduled but reluctantly declined since I’d be up in the air at that point. Incommunicado! (photo credit: Virgin America/cnet)

However, as we reached 10,000 feet and the flight attendant hawked the Gogo Inflight Internet it hit me – I didn’t have to miss my meetings at all. I immediately signed on and within minutes had joined the LessMeeting meeting space. Even better, my calls had been double booked (go figure!) BUT I was able to follow along with both meetings simultaneously. I got a laugh when I added a couple comments in the collaborative notes and spooked a couple of the attendees.

It was exactly what I needed; I was there in both meetings, without actually being at either. Next time I think I might up the ante and Skype into the meeting as well…Or I may just skip the whole thing and pretend my laptop battery was dead. The point is, it’s a great feeling to have the option when I need it.

What about you? What unusual circumstance have you found yourself using LessMeeting?