Starter Writing skill
Prepare a meeting agenda
Build an outcome-focused agenda with preparation, decision points, timing, and ownership.
Design the meeting around work that benefits from synchronous attention. Move reading and routine status into pre-work.
Procedure
- Confirm the meeting owner, participants, duration, decision authority, and required outcome.
- Test whether the outcome needs a meeting; cancel or replace it with an asynchronous artifact when it does not.
- Write a one-sentence purpose and explicit outputs such as a decision, plan, diagnosis, or commitment.
- Include only participants who contribute evidence, make the decision, execute the result, or are materially affected.
- For each item, name the owner, question, pre-read, evidence, method, timebox, and expected output.
- Put consequential or uncertain work before low-value updates and reserve time for synthesis.
- Send accessible pre-work early enough to review and identify missing inputs before the meeting.
- Add note ownership, decision rules, parking-lot handling, and the channel for follow-up.
- Recheck that the timed agenda fits and that the needed authority and evidence will be present.
Failure plan
- Do not use an agenda to disguise a predetermined decision as consultation.
- Never require sensitive information in broadly shared pre-work.
- If required evidence or decision authority is absent, rescope or postpone rather than perform agreement.
- Protect breaks, accessibility needs, time zones, and stated working-hour boundaries.
--- name: prepare-a-meeting-agenda category: write description: Build an outcome-focused agenda with preparation, decision points, timing, and ownership. Use when a meeting needs a purpose beyond sharing updates. --- # prepare-a-meeting-agenda Design the meeting around work that benefits from synchronous attention. Move reading and routine status into pre-work. ## Procedure 1. Confirm the meeting owner, participants, duration, decision authority, and required outcome. 2. Test whether the outcome needs a meeting; cancel or replace it with an asynchronous artifact when it does not. 3. Write a one-sentence purpose and explicit outputs such as a decision, plan, diagnosis, or commitment. 4. Include only participants who contribute evidence, make the decision, execute the result, or are materially affected. 5. For each item, name the owner, question, pre-read, evidence, method, timebox, and expected output. 6. Put consequential or uncertain work before low-value updates and reserve time for synthesis. 7. Send accessible pre-work early enough to review and identify missing inputs before the meeting. 8. Add note ownership, decision rules, parking-lot handling, and the channel for follow-up. 9. Recheck that the timed agenda fits and that the needed authority and evidence will be present. ## Failure plan - Do not use an agenda to disguise a predetermined decision as consultation. - Never require sensitive information in broadly shared pre-work. - If required evidence or decision authority is absent, rescope or postpone rather than perform agreement. - Protect breaks, accessibility needs, time zones, and stated working-hour boundaries. ## Done - Purpose, outcomes, participants, pre-work, owners, and timeboxes are recorded - Decision authority and evidence readiness are confirmed - The agenda is sent and opens correctly for every participant