Agreeing on a clear shared purpose …
Knowing who you are inviting to the meeting and how you want them to change is the most important step in defining the purpose of your meeting. It should then be relatively easy to translate this into an objective that everybody involved in the meeting understands, and can support.
Keeping people aligned on a clear shared purpose for the meeting is perhaps even more important in remote meetings because it is so easy for people to disengage when unobserved.
You might want to consider the following tips:
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Pre-circulate the proposed objectives before the meeting so that people can comment on them
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Write them on sticky notes on your virtual whiteboard so that they can be adjusted if required
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Review them at the start of the meeting, and check that everyone recognises them as a worthwhile goal to focus the meeting on achieving
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Adjust the sticky notes as required until item 3 is fulfilled, and people commit to their delivery
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Fix the objectives, make them prominent, and check progress against them regularly
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Rigorously halt any discussions on topics outside of the objectives and place them in the parking lot. (This is a section of the whiteboard where off-topic, albeit important, items are listed. I this way they are not forgotten, and can be picked up at the end)
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Confirm the objectives have been met at the end of the meeting, and set actions for any that haven’t
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Undertake a meeting review with specific reference to how you met the objectives
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Revisit off-topic items in the parking lot, and how they will be dealt with moving forward. This will build confidence that everyone’s concerns WILL be addressed – at the right time, and without subverting the agenda
… and the practical steps to get there.
High quality, clearly defined objectives tend to make it fairly easy to see the steps that will be required to deliver them. One of the ways to ensure a clear shared purpose for your meeting is to involve people in outlining their hopes and concerns in regard to those objectives. This helps to define how they understand the objectives, and builds further ownership for their delivery.
Further resources to help you with this, and to review your progress against them can be found here : QFD for meetings; Meeting tools; Session plans