Why an agenda is not a guarantee
When you work as a corporate strategy consultant, meetings are your entire ecosystem.
You plan meetings.
You run meetings.
You sit in meeeeetings after meetings.
So naturally, when you start your career, you get taught the Golden Rule of “effective meetings”:
Write an agenda.
Simple. Obvious. Logical.
And here’s my take after years of sitting in every type of meeting imaginable:
Agendas are essential… and also not a guarantee.
Not a guarantee of an outcome.
Not a guarantee of a dynamic.
Not a guarantee of the feeling you leave with.
Let me explain.
Agendas are essential
You should never gather humans without a purpose.
(Thank you, Priya Parker.)
An agenda shows intention. It brings structure, flow, and a sense of direction.
It’s a huge step up from the “we’ll just wing it” type of meetings.
But you’ve probably been in a meeting that had a perfectly crafted agenda and still felt dysfunctional.
👉 Tell me in the comments if these sound familiar:
The “Talk-at-people-for-58-minutes-and-open-for-questions-no-one-asks” meeting
The “We followed the plan and it was completely off” meeting
The “How did we end up here? This isn’t even the topic” meeting
Because here is the thing :
An agenda is just a plan
An agenda is the theory of the meeting. The beautiful, hopeful, structured imagination of how things should go.
But meetings are not theoretical. Meetings are guided by… (you guessed it !) live human dynamics.
And humans — wonderful, brilliant, complex humans — do not always follow the plan.
There is a very delicate line to hold when guiding a meeting:
Too loose → you go nowhere.
Too tight → you drive over people and lose them entirely.
Your intention is probably not to talk “from above” and leave the group behind…
but also not to lose the plot and waste everyone’s time
And this is exactly why… It’s very difficult to lead AND facilitate a complex meeting (but I digress).
facilitation is jazz, not classical music
A great facilitator walks into a meeting with a clear, intentional plan.
And then — they listen.
This is the secret:
Planning sets the stage. Presence runs the show.
A great facilitator is like a jazz musician:
They know the rhythm.
They know the patterns.
They know what “good” sounds like.
But when the other musicians start playing —
They adjust.
They blend.
They follow what’s alive in the room.
They improvise responsibly.
You might not play exactly what you planned.
But you will play what the group needs to reach the goal.
Because facilitation is the art of shaping the human dynamics live so the group keeps moving forward —
not theoretically, but actually.
So if your recent meetings felt like ivory tower speeches or deep-in-the-weeds spirals…
Here’s the thing :
Whether you want a clear goal or a specific feeling at the end,
facilitation is the secret sauce.
An agenda alone can’t save a meeting.
But a facilitator probably can.
If you want to transform your next meeting from rigid or chaotic into something alive, productive, and human —check out our facilitation packages below or book a free discovery call to learn more.
