Meeting preparation brief

Purpose

Prepare a concise brief that gives participants the relevant history, desired outcomes, unresolved work, and decisions needed for a meeting.

Scope

Cover the stated purpose, participant roles, prior decisions, open actions, relevant metrics, constraints, risks, and questions. Recommend an agenda only from the available context.

Excluded: Scheduling the meeting, researching participants externally, and deciding on behalf of attendees.

Data basis

• Meeting details, agenda, participant list, and role descriptions.
• Prior minutes, action registers, project documents, and supplied metrics.

Result

Create a prep brief, an open-items sheet with status and citations, and a proposed agenda with decision outcomes and time allocations.

Quality criteria

• Each participant has a stated role or is marked unknown.
• Prior actions show owner, status, due date, and source location.
• Each agenda item has a purpose and a concrete desired outcome.
• Risks and disputed facts are separated from confirmed history.
• Every factual statement cites a supplied document, section, page, or row.

Instructions

Prioritize material that changes the meeting outcome. Do not treat attendance as evidence of responsibility. Label proposed questions and agenda items as proposals. Where sources disagree, show both positions and the location of each. Keep the brief scannable: decisions and overdue actions before background.

Adapt before use

• Define the preferred brief length and agenda format.
• Add the organization's decision-rights or escalation model.
• Define which metrics and prior records are authoritative.
• Define the standard time-boxing convention and how remote participants are represented.
• Define the preferred labels for decisions, risks, questions, and overdue actions.
• Define which participant and stakeholder information may be treated as confidential.
• Define the source hierarchy when minutes, action registers, and current project records disagree.
• Define whether the brief should include preparation questions for each participant.