30 Meeting Topic Ideas Analyzed From 50 Agendas

We have a library of 50 meeting agenda templates with 275 meeting topics (or, agenda items) across all agendas. I plugged the entire library into an AI tool for analysis and then Excel to double-check the computer’s work. Here’s what we found.

• How many topics should you include in a meeting?
• What are the most/least common topics?
• 30 meeting topic ideas
• How long should you spend on each topic?
  • Download the meeting agenda library

 

How many meeting topics should you include in an agenda?

On average, there are 5.5 agenda topics per meeting.

• One of them is almost always “Next Steps” (50%) or “Action Items” (48%) that are mainly for notes rather than discussions
• 36% of the time, agendas included an “Introduction” (which could be small-talk or a quick overview of the meeting rather than it’s own agenda topic

Takeaway: Include 4-5 topic ideas per meeting.

See Also: How To Write An Agenda For A Meeting

 

What are the most and least common meeting topics?

We counted occurrences of agenda items/topics from 50 meeting agendas. Here are the most and least common ones.

Most Common Meeting Topics

1. Next Steps: 25 occurrences (50%)
2. Action Items: 24 occurrences (48%)
3. Introduction: 18 occurrences (36%)
4. Feedback/Q&A Session: 15 occurrences (30%)
5. Discussion/Learning: 14 occurrences (28%)

Least Common Meeting Topics

Each of the following meeting topic ideas appears just once across all 50 agendas:

1. Executive Session
2. Vision & Mission
3. Sprint Review
4. Sprint Retrospective
5. Standup (Scrum)

A few notes:

• There are many more individual instances, these are just five examples.
• Most of the individual instances come from specific frameworks like these:
  • Executive Session is a common topic in board meetings
  • Sprint Review & Retrospective come from the Agile/Scrum methodology

 

Meeting Topic Ideas From 50 Agendas

These 30 topics appeared in at least two meeting agenda templates. In the list below, you’ll see 20 main ones with 10 synonyms nested under.

This is the list of the most commonly discussed meeting topics ideas:

1. Next Steps
2. Introduction
   1. Call To Order
3. Adjournment
   1. Closing Remarks
4. Project Overview
5. Discussion
   1. Open Discussion
   2. Feedback and Open Discussion
6. Feedback
   1. Meeting Feedback
   2. Feedback and Open Discussion
7. Project Management
   1. Progress Update
8. Approval of Previous Meeting Minutes
9. Metrics
   1. Scorecard
10. Q&A Session
    1. Questions
11. Roles & Responsibilities
    1. Role
12. Last Meeting’s Tasks
13. Financial Report
14. Committee Reports
15. Old Business
16. New Business
17. Announcements
18. Systems
19. Company
20. Reporting

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How long should you spend on each meeting topic?

In our meeting agenda library, we have time allocations listed for most agendas. For example, in a 30-minute meeting, you’d see an introduction for five minutes, a presentation for 10, and a discussion for 15.

Here are the common time allocations from the most common meeting topics:

• Introduction: Average duration of 7.5 minutes (ranges from 5 to 15 minutes)
• Discussion/Learning: Average duration of 20 minutes (ranges from 10 to 30 minutes)
• Feedback/Q&A Session: Average duration of 15 minutes (ranges from 5 to 30 minutes)
• Action Items: Average duration of 10 minutes (ranges from 5 to 20 minutes)
• Next Steps: Average duration of 8.5 minutes (ranges from 5 to 15 minutes)

Takeaway: Most meetings should have a quick introduction (5 mins), a longer presentation, discussion, or feedback session (20 mins), and a conclusion to write down action items (5 mins).

 

Other Meeting Topic Insights and Analysis

• Strategic planning meetings are typically long and comprehensive (multiple hours across multiple days) and infrequent (quarterly or annually)
• Board meetings are longer meetings (1-3 hours), more formal, and infrequent (monthly or quarterly)
• Team meetings are shorter (30-60 minutes), frequent (weekly), and focus on project management and reporting
• One-on-one meetings are shorter (30-60 minutes) and focus on goal-setting, mentoring, reviews, and personal-relationship building

Learn more about the meeting types we’ve identified or how we perfected our meeting cadence.

See Also: The Guide To Meeting Etiquette

 

Download Our Meeting Agenda Library

Want to get access to all 50 meeting agendas we analyzed?

They are all part of our meeting agenda library that you can download here. 

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