How to Host an Effective Operations Meeting (Step-by-Step Guide)

Hosting a successful operations meeting requires preparation and follow-through. Follow these tips for success. 

1. Draft an Operations Meeting Agenda

Before you even think about holding an operations meeting, you need to create an agenda. It serves as a guide for the discussion, ensuring everyone has a chance to contribute and that no topic is left untouched.

To create an effective operations meeting agenda:

• Start by brainstorming the key points you want to cover during the meeting. These could be anything from new product launches to upcoming sales targets.
• Once you’ve identified these items, write them down in order of importance.
• Next, list the people who you’d like to attend the meeting. Ensure they’re involved in the project or activity being discussed.
• Finally, add a date and time to the meeting. Try to schedule the meeting for a day when everyone can attend.
• Now that you have a complete operations meeting agenda, share it with your colleagues well in advance. They’ll appreciate knowing exactly what you want to discuss.

A board management solution like OnBoard helps improve the development and distribution of the meeting agenda. Instead of relying on pen and paper, you can leverage OnBoard’s powerful features to build your meeting agenda in minutes and send it out to attendees via the centralized dashboard. And because the content is stored within the system, you won’t lose it if someone forgets their laptop or phone.

2. Put the Meeting on the Calendar

Creating a calendar invite for a meeting might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s common to forget about the scheduled meetup even after creating a board meeting agenda. Adding it to the calendar ensures everyone knows when and where the meeting will occur. And a meeting notification comes in handy in reminding attendees to pause what they’re doing and join the meeting, especially for virtual meetings. Think of the calendar as a gentle nudge to get things done.

3. Keep the Conversation on Track

One of the biggest mistakes you can make at an operations meeting is to let the conversation drift off-course. You can have the best board meeting minutes template in the world, but if you don’t keep the conversation focused, you’ll struggle to accomplish much.

To keep the conversation on track, use your agenda as a checklist to remind you of discussion topics. Or consider technology solutions, like OnBoard’s agenda time management tool, which works to keep meetings focused and on-schedule, and automatically issues a reminder 15 minutes before your meeting is scheduled to end.

4. Ask for Feedback After the Meeting

After the meeting has ended, you should ask for feedback from attendees. This could be as simple as asking whether they had any questions or concerns during the meeting. But it could also include more detailed questions such as:

• What did you think of the meeting?
• Did anything come up that we didn’t cover?
• Do you have any suggestions for how we can improve next time?