Important insight.
If you can’t articulate the purpose for meeting, then you’re not ready to meet.
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But clarifying just the purpose for the meeting isn’t sufficient. You also need to be very clear about the meeting’s objectives and required outcomes.
This is why purpose, objectives, and outcomes are intrinsic to your meeting design activities.
It’s quite common for these three terms to be used interchangeably, so we’ll take a look at each term, and how they fit together. We want to dispel the notion that they are interchangeable terms.
Often, it’s best to work with the end in mind. Thinking about the required value outcomes, helps to clarify the meeting’s purpose and its objectives.
Let's start with some definitions...
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Meeting Purpose
Purpose explains the reason for meeting – there can only be one purpose.
Meeting Objectives
Objectives are the things that you plan to do, or that you need to achieve in the meeting. There can be multiple objectives.
Meeting Outcomes
Outcomes are the things that get delivered to generate value.
There are 4 outcome types.
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Expected Outcomes
What we expect to deliver ahead of working through the objectives.
Required Outcomes
What must be delivered, even if there is some change to expectations.
Unexpected Outcomes
These are positive but unforeseen. They may be retrospectively added.
Unintended Outcomes
Negative and unforeseen. They need to be spotted and quickly dealt with.
Now, let's consider an example.
Your company needs a new homepage...
Problems with the current home page have been identified, in terms of the suboptimal experience it offers to customers. This has been validated through customer engagement.
So, agreeing a new, final, design for the homepage is the expected outcome. That’s the end in mind.
But, to deliver that outcome, the meeting participants will need to generate some new home page design ideas. That’s the purpose for meeting.
From those ideas, they’ll be able to create 3 draft homepage layouts. The creation of those layouts is the objectives.
So, having started with the end in mind, we are now clear that the meeting’s purpose is to generate new homepage ideas.
The objective is to turn those ideas into three draft homepage layouts, and the outcome is agreement of a final design that will go to production.
So, in summary...
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Example Purpose
Generate some homepage design ideas.
Example Objectives
Create 3 draft homepage layouts.
Example Outcomes
Agree a final homepage design.
Top Tip.
Make sure you keep the Purpose & Outcomes card handy. The insights are helpful. For example, using action-orientated verbs to describe what’s needed to achieve the objectives, is great advice.
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