October 14, 2022
Editorial
Harvard Business Review (website)

Is Agenda Theater Ruining Your Meetings?

By: A.V. Whillans, Dave Feldman and Damian Wisniewski

Format:Electronic

Abstract

Like triaging our inboxes, clearing our Slack messages, or managing our to-do lists, preparing an agenda can make us feel like we’ve accomplished something. And when we go through our detailed, bulleted agendas with our colleagues before or during a meeting, it sure feels like productivity is happening. But research shows that these feelings may in fact be leading us into the trap of agenda theater: We sink time and effort into agendas that create the appearance of effective meetings, without actually improving how meetings are run (and potentially even leading to less effective, overly-structured meetings). To avoid falling into this trap, the authors argue that we should take an outcome-centric approach that’s focused on simply defining the goal of the meeting — what we want to achieve, and why — rather than attempting to create a detailed agenda that describes exactly how we’ll achieve that goal in advance.

Keywords

Management Practices and Processes

Citation

Whillans, A.V., Dave Feldman, and Damian Wisniewski. "Is Agenda Theater Ruining Your Meetings?" Harvard Business Review (website) (October 14, 2022).