[cgb223]

Product Manager here, I set a lot of meetings.

Basically make sure there’s a very clear goal for the meeting and very clear bounds on what is being discussed.

For me, I put an agenda in every meeting invite I send out with:

1. The purpose of the meeting

2. Bullet points on the things to consider

3. The end goal. What is the point we stop discussing

Part of it is also keeping people talking about relevant things.

It’s tough being the person who says “this is a great line of thinking but it’s not relevant to X” but in the end it helps make timeboxed meetings actually stay timeboxed.

Also, depending on the context, often it’s helpful to pre-align with a few key people who might cause potential struggle. Don’t pre-align with another meeting though. That’s just redundant.

[Bluepacsky]

Your third point, setting an "end goal" is a great point! I have not thought about that often enough. I usually set agendas for my meetings but too often I do not define the ideal "final state" I would like to see from a meeting. Do you expect this also from others when they send you meetings? How do you handle regular meetings as a product manager, e.g. Sprint plannings in a Scrum context, do you then say: "My end goal for our planning is that everybody knows what to do in the next sprint"? Also, I tried to also ask this to others, but how is meeting feedback in your organization? My own meetings I have control over, but those are less than the ones other schedule where I am a participant, not an organizer.

[RRL]

Same same. I feel your points really communicate to the attendees that you value their time and input.

I can't stand meetings with no purpose/agenda/end goals. In my experience they grind decision making to a halt, increase interoffice politics/shenanigangs, and we end up building worse things because we have spent so much time in worthless meetings/debating about worthless meetings that we don't have time to actually build a good solution.

It really starts at the top. If stakeholders are pushing points 1, 2, 3, then the incentives organizationally are going to change and you'll end up with productive meetings as an outcome. If they're the type that are, "The agenda is in the meeting title! (Q2 sales checkin)" Then you'll always get unsatisfactory results.