How often do you participate in meetings and wonder what ever happened to the work you did in the previous meeting? If you begin each meeting as if it’s a brand new meeting, you miss an opportunity to support accountability and maintain momentum. Join me this week as I highlight three reasons it makes sense to start your meetings with action items from the previous meeting.
Creates a culture of accountability
When you begin each meeting with action items from the previous meeting, the attendees expect to report on their progress. If each meeting is structured in a similar way, then the coalition’s culture becomes accountability-focused. Your coalition members, leaders and staff will not want to appear unprepared and will be ready! While this may take several months to become “normal,” when you consistently practice starting your meetings with action items, you will positively impact your coalition culture.
Simplifies agenda planning
If you always include action items from the beginning of your meetings, it minimizes the planning needed for each meeting agenda. Consider structuring other aspects of your agenda to meet the meeting purpose so that you can review and slightly tweak before each meeting. Also, this will help you be able to actually send the meeting agenda out a week in advance (as we discussed last week).
Maintains momentum
One of the biggest challenges in coalition work is maintaining momentum. How many times have you been part of a productive meeting and then a few months later, you find that you haven’t really made much more progress? Although coalition work takes time, it can be really discouraging when you lose momentum. When we begin our meetings with action items from the previous meeting, we maintain momentum. When we maintain momentum, we support engagement and accountability.
How are you going to include action items from the previous meeting in your next meeting agenda?
If you want to explore these accountability keys further, Register today for my next Free Masterclass on Wednesday, October 20th, The Thing No One Wants to Talk About Part 1
