Today I spent some time writing about how to set a good goal for a meeting. I hope you like it:
This morning I went to a meeting with no subject and no other information. In many cases people take the time to write a headline but even if they make perfect sense to you other people might have a hard time understanding what it is you want to talk about or what you want from the meeting. For my meeting this morning, I only knew who had called for the meeting and who else was invited. With this limited information I had tried to create an idea of what the meeting was about, my guess turned out to be almost correct, but I was completely off on what the person wanted as an output for the meeting.
When you show up to a meeting, you probably want to know why you are there and what you are there to accomplish. The goal is there to give us something to aim for and to give context to the meeting. For example, if someone asks you to create a new estimate for the project budget, it would be good to know what it will be used for and why it is needed now.
If you are asked to climb a mountain it would be great to know:
• What mountain are we climbing?
• Why are we climbing this mountain and why is it important now?
• Where are we now?
Marcus Degerman 