Running Planning Meetings (for EE dissertations in particular)

This short document aims to make your weekly dissertation planning-meetings short and productive. Your aim should be that everyone get a chance to contribute, that no-one should burble on for too long and that you have a clear and concise record at the end of what you have agreed (particularly with respect to any agreed actions and who will perform them).

1. Pre-requisites

An aim - you should know what the meeting aims to achieve
An Agenda - this is a fleshed-out version of the aim as items to be discussed - see below.
A Chairman, who will control the discussion
A Secretary, who will take notes

2. After the meeting

You should have a set of notes (known formally as "minutes") that are available to all group members and are agreed by you all to be an accurate record of what you decided. You should also have a date for your next meeting.

3. The Agenda

Should look like this:-

Apologies (indicating the names of any group members who have already indicated that they cannot be present)
Minutes of Last Meeting (you should agree at this stage that the minutes of your last meeting are accurate, and the Chairman should sign them).
Matters Arising from the Last Meeting (anything in the minutes of the last meeting that will not otherwise be raised and that should be discussed).
First thing for discussion
Second thing for discussion
Other things for discussion.
Other things for discussion.
Other things for discussion.
Any Other Business (Just a catch-all, in case someone thinks of something important to say)
Date of next Meeting (you should fix this up NOW).

The agenda should be made up by either the Chairman or the Secretary before the meeting and everyone should be offered the opportunity to suggest items for discussion at that stage.

4. The Secretary's Notes or "Minutes"

Should have the same headings as the Agenda and should note what was decided and what actions have been agreed. It's not generally necessary to write things like "Fred Bloggs said .... and then Joe Soap said ....". Edited highlights are usually more useful. It is particularly important that the minutes record who was and who was not present at the meeting.

5. The Chairman

Must make sure that the group sticks to the agenda and must exercise firm but sensitive control of the discussion. He or she can, of course, enter into the discussion. In really formal meetings, people don't speak to each other and all remarks are addressed to the Chairman. This is overkill in a dissertation-type meeting but the principle is good in that the chairman should be the controller and random conversations should not be allowed to break out. It's not easy, being a good Chairman. It's easy to lose control and end up chairing a rabble and some chairman are too dictatorial. You will learn a lot from chairing meetings and it might make you behave better at meetings at which you are not chairman.

6. Hints and Tips

Respect the agenda, do what the chairman tells you to (by all means disagree with him or her, but don't be anarchic) and give the secretary time to take notes.

Study the agenda before the meeting and decide where you have something to say. Make sure that you get to say it. Where you have nothing to say, shut up. Don't say something just to hear the sound of your own voice. That makes meetings last forever.

Take your own notes as the meeting develops. This will allow you to check that the hard-pressed secretary has got things right.

Don't be a silent member. Take and active part, or the meeting may well decide a lot of things that you don't like.

Meetings are a bit of a pain, but they are essential to a "democratic" organisation. All your efforts should be directed towards making the ratio between the effectiveness (E) of a meeting and the time it takes (T) as large as possible. Maximise E / T , with the constraint that D - the measure of democracy - must not tend to zero!.