The POP Planning Model for Meetings and Gatherings

Organizational teams gather for a number of reasons and on a variety of timelines. Often, leaders know intuitively they need to pull the team together to create or review goals or generate a strategic plan. In some cases, it’s a crisis that requires a meeting. Regardless of the context of the gathering, it’s almost always true that planning is critical, and time is scarce. 

We at Freedom Lifted always have this in mind when we’re working with justice-oriented nonprofits and collectives to facilitate a meeting or retreat.

To make the most of valuable time, our team organizes only two planning calls, informed by the simple-yet-effective framework of POP - (P)urpose, (O)utcomes and (P)rocess. 

For our first planning call, we identify the purpose and outcomes of the planned gathering. 

(P)urpose - Why are we doing this?

We get clear about why we’re meeting by asking:

• Why are we bringing people together? 

• Why this group of people? 

• Why now?

• Why in this way (i.e. this size group, this meeting modality) ?

• How does this time together serve our larger mission?

The purpose should be clearly informed by the needs of the participants – and therefore worth the time investment. Any meeting or gathering requires solid answers to these questions. 

A good (p)urpose statement starts with verbs. For example, “We call this meeting…”

• To clarify our core values

• To learn how to share decision-making power with our employees

• To explore ways our team can create more space for collaboration

If leaders are unable to clearly answer these questions and state their purpose, we likely have more work to do before we can plan to meet.

(O)utcomes - What will we accomplish?

Desired outcomes can be varied, but they may include: 1) knowledge, 2) attitudes, 3) skills, and/or 4) deliverables:

We start by asking, “When our time together comes to a close…”

• What do we hope the group will know? 

• How do we want the group to feel about the work?

• What do we want the group to be able to do? 

• What document(s) need to be drafted or finalized? 

• Is there anything else we hope each person in the group will walk away with? 

As with defining our purpose for meeting, clarity is also necessary to name our desired outcomes. These should also be informed by the needs of the group and realistic – given the time that’s been set aside for this purpose.

A good (o)utcome statement leads with nouns. For example (in alignment with the purpose statements above), “We hope to define…”

• A clear understanding of our core values and their application to our work

• Practical strategies for how to engage staff in certain types of decision-making

• New ways to actively and intentionally support each other

In our second planning call, we propose a process for how the gathering will go, based on the stated purpose and desired outcomes. 

(P)rocess - How do we get there?

This is when we offer the draft agenda, which features the POP. The purpose and outcomes are at the top, followed by a process (or plan) for how we move through our time together. We can then discuss whether the agenda is true to our purpose and if it can give us the map we’re looking for.

The agenda includes topics with estimated timestamps, plus who will lead each part of the meeting and how we plan to communicate (i.e. via small group discussion, individual reflection, etc.). Our agendas also include a set of shared group agreements around how we will individually and collectively show up during our time together. 

Keep it focused. Keep it simple.

Asking groups to think about their POP in advance helps leaders more efficiently and effectively plan meetings, programs, and retreats of any size. This framework can even be applied to planning large events, such as multi-day or multi-leader conferences.

At Freedom Lifted, we even apply the POP model when we’re starting new projects or initiatives. This helps keep everyone connected to why we’re doing what we’re doing and what we hope it will achieve.

We invite you to try out the POP Planning Model next time you or your colleagues have a new idea or are feeling fuzzy on a project. Or put a POP at the top of your next meeting agenda. Let this framework help you focus, simplify, and measure your success.

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We are so grateful to have learned this framework at Rockwood Leadership Institute where it was originally developed by Leslie Sholl Jaffe and Randall Alford. This blog is also informed by the Social Transformation Project’s The Fabulous POP model document.