Be Prepared To Throw Away Your Agenda

What are you allowing to control your business? The agenda or the results you want to achieve?

A meeting, an event or a strategy–anything that has an agenda–always has the potential to take on a life of its own based on the input given by the participants and the reality of the situation, as opposed to your projection. This is good and must be understood. This is success. This is ownership of the results rather than the process and this is what you want to have happen. When you support your participants in taking  ownership of the agenda, and when they fight for their views and desired changes, do change the agenda and go with what they are bringing to the table. This is more valuable than sticking with the agenda as planned. This is your team taking over, this is flat management and it must be respected, supported and nurtured. This adds tremendous value to the project and throwing away the agenda is the best action possible.

A leader of a meeting, event or strategy must also be able to see what the team needs, or what is required by the events at hand, and be able to make adjustments on the spot to meet the requirements of the evolving situation. The leader must be prepared to throw the agenda away and make the changes he sees his team needs. Whether or not the team asks for such changes, the leader must be aware and figuring out what his team needs based on their feedback. If the agenda is not providing this, throw the agenda away. Take ownership of the results, do not let the agenda control.

An agenda is a good starting point–a reference point–but not reality. Reality is what happens when the agenda gets thrown into the fire and the leader leads. Keeping to an agenda just because that was the plan does not work. It is a trap. Don’t fall into it. The agenda is a good planning tool but made to be changed.