Scoping meetings to make them more effective

Okay, this is not a marketing or business development tip per se.

However, I think it’s really useful. As it will prevent confusion and save you a lot of time. It’s a tip on scoping your meetings to make them more effective.

Here it goes.

Now, I’m not a big fan of meetings. However, sometimes you need to get together with a group of people and decide on a couple of items to keep a project going.

If you scope that meeting with the answers to 3 simple questions (and 1 check-up question), everything that follows will make more sense to everyone in the room. Making your meeting more efficient and effective.

1. What? Explain what you’ll be doing during the meeting.
   
   Example: In the next 30 minutes, we’ll discuss the progress of our go-to-market strategy and plan next steps.
   
2. Why? Provide the overarching goal and make sure all attendees are aligned on this objective.
   
   Example: We’re doing this as it’s a necessary step in successfully bringing our solution to market and achieving the results we’re after.
   
3. How? Clarify how you will do the what (in order to achieve the why).
   
   Example: We’ll address all action items within the work streams we’ve defined. If you’re responsible for an item, you can give a brief update. If an action item is unassigned, we’ll assign it to someone during this meeting.
   
4. Does that make sense? Check with the participants if they are all on the same page and this sounds good to them. If not, you can adjust the contents of your meeting.

Got all the answers? Great! You can now start your productive meeting.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for reading Nudge #045, sent to busy subject matter experts on March 18, 2025.