Running Effective Ad Hoc Meetings: A Starter Guide

Have you ever found yourself sitting through an hour (or longer) meeting where only 15 minutes of the meeting seem relevant to you and the work you do? The rest of the meeting might be useful for other individuals, but it eats away at your productivity time and attention span.

Meanwhile, ad hoc meetings can help speed up the collaborative decision-making and problem-solving processes. It is no surprise that Microsoft reported that 57% of meetings are ad-hoc calls with no calendar invite — such a successful brand is giving time back to employees to focus on their work, not obligatory meetings.

In this article, we’ll talk about the pros, cons, and best practices of ad hoc meetings so that you can make your meetings more impactful instead of draining.

What Is an Ad Hoc Meeting?

The phrase "ad hoc" is Latin-based and means "when necessary" or "when needed." An ad hoc meeting is a one-and-done meeting where a specific topic or issue is covered, usually ones that aren’t addressed in the typical scheduled meetings. They’re also sometimes called one-off meetings or impromptu meetings.

Let’s say a company just rolled out a new feature for its product or service. Less than 24 hours into pushing that feature live, something not only broke the new feature, but several other pre-existing features as well. At this point, experts from several departments might meet, discuss what went wrong, and how each team will do its part to fix the issue. You could classify this as an ad hoc meeting.

Ad Hoc Meetings vs Regular Meetings

Ad hoc meetings and regular meetings share a lot of elements in common, but they serve fairly different functions. Mainly, ad hoc meetings are unplanned and informal about a specific issue, while regular meetings are scheduled and about routine issues. The chart below highlights some of those key differences so you can understand when and how to use one over the other.

When is an Ad Hoc Meeting a Good Fit?

There are times when meetings are best held at a regular cadence, and then there are times when it’s better to get everyone in one room to come to an immediate decision and move forward as a team. Below are some instances where an ad hoc meeting might be the best fit for you and your team’s needs.

• Urgent Decisions: Sometimes decisions have to be made with urgency, and when they do, a fast huddle to make a decision that cannot wait for the next scheduled meeting might be the best decision. You can always circle back or fully address certain elements later, but sometimes, a quick meeting can prevent a lot of headache and duplicated work.

• Crises or Incidents: Emergencies happen. When they do, a rapid-response session may be necessary to align on actions for outages, major bugs, or PR issues.​ While there may be some follow-up meetings in the future to touch base about how the crisis is being handled, a high-level action plan can be largely determined in a single ad hoc meeting.

• Project Blockers: Sometimes a project will run into a single issue that blocks regular progress. These issues don’t necessarily have to wait until the next regularly scheduled meeting. A quick ad hoc meeting can help improve alignment and remove that specific blocker so work can continue without delay.​

• Time‑Sensitive Opportunities: Not all decisions can be made on a pre-scheduled timeline. Sometimes opportunities appear, and you have to make a time-sensitive decision. A short meeting to evaluate and act on a sudden market, partnership, or campaign opportunity.​

That being said, ad hoc meetings aren’t always the most effective option. Too many ad hoc meetings might make everyone feel like there is no real plan and teach everyone to always be in reaction mode. Sometimes it’d be best to let an issue wait or to set up a series of scheduled meetings so that the team can tackle a given issue or project in a clear and organized way.

Below are some examples of when it’d be best to organize a scheduled meeting instead of an ad hoc one.

• Complex decisions requiring research and analysis: Some decisions will take time to make because they’re complicated. They require buy-in from multiple stakeholders who all need to be on the same page about how to move forward. A decision may need to be made, but it’s more important for it to be made correctly than right now. In cases like these, it’d be best to avoid an ad hoc meeting.

• Topics affecting people not available in the moment: Sometimes someone needs to be in the room where a decision is being made, and they aren’t. In cases like that, it would be better to wait until all of the relevant stakeholders are together so the decision can be made properly with the right authority and consideration.

• Issues that would benefit from a written asynchronous discussion first: In non-emergencies, it can help to start with an asynchronous discussion so people have time to review context, share initial thoughts, and come prepared. When a topic needs reflection rather than a fast decision, jumping into an ad hoc meeting is usually not the most useful approach.

• Situations where you’re calling meetings out of anxiety rather than necessity: There are instances when tensions are high, and everyone can feel the pressure to act without enough preparation. It’s easy to fall into a reactive mode in these instances and call ad hoc meetings for every issue. It’s important to gut-check yourself and make sure everything is still largely being taken care of in a methodical manner instead of a bunch of one-off meetings.

Core Benefits of Ad Hoc Meetings

There are many benefits to putting together an ad hoc meeting. Below are some of the benefits you may consider when deciding if you need to schedule one.

Faster and More Agile Decisions

During a one-off meeting, people can be gathered, discussions can be had, and decisions can be made quickly. They don’t necessarily require a series of business items to complete.

So if a decision has to be made quickly, an ad hoc meeting can help speed that final decision.

Less Wasted Meeting Time

Meetings usually begin with an icebreaker or some sort of small talk to help warm up the meeting attendees. In your average meeting, they’ll cover a variety of different subjects and provide updates for a bunch of projects. But in an ad hoc meeting, there’s usually one topic, and that’s it. That makes them faster to start and faster to finish.

Single Focused Objective

Ad hoc meetings are focused on one thing. That helps give everyone who attends the meeting laser-like focus on solving the issue at hand. These quick huddle rooms, when done right, are quick and efficient and allow you to move the needle on a specific topic rapidly.

Only Needed Participants

A common characteristic of an ad hoc meeting is that, usually, the only attendees are people with decision-making power. That’s because they’re only focused on one issue. You don’t need a variety of people to talk about different topics. All that’s needed are the individuals who can help make a decision or develop a plan for that one topic in that one instance.

Flexible Timing and Location

Another great advantage to ad hoc meetings is that, due to the smaller number of people attending as well as the faster nature of the meeting itself, it’s much easier to schedule a time and place to have the meeting. Sometimes all you need is five minutes’ notice to get an quick virtual meeting set up with other coworkers.

Challenges and Limitations of Ad Hoc Meetings

There are some potential issues with ad hoc meetings. Below are some of those challenges, as well as some tips for minimizing them.

Interrupts Focused Work Periods

Many office workers try to set up blocks of time to focus on specific projects or types of tasks. These blocks of focused work can be easily disrupted by an ad hoc meeting calendar invite.

Tip: To improve this situation, put blocked time on your calendar and take advantage of Slack or other comms statuses to let people know that you’re doing deep-focus work. This way, your team members have a better idea of when an ad hoc meeting works and whether or not it should be scheduled for later if major players can’t make it.

Little or No Meeting Preparation

Ad hoc meetings are usually posted on the calendar within hours of the meeting itself. This means people have little time to prepare themselves and or get the proper context for why the meeting is happening in the first place.

Tip: All ad hoc meeting invites should include the specific problem being addressed, the question or decision that the meeting will hopefully resolve, any links that can provide context, and a proper amount of time to review those notes before the meeting.

Often Poor Documentation and Follow-Through

Oftentimes, ad hoc meetings end just as quickly as they start. And while some people are able to remember some high-level ideas shared in a given meeting, the specific details are often missed.

Tip: To avoid this, have someone take notes while in the meeting or take advantage of AI note-taking tools so that everyone who attended has access to those small, specific details after the meeting to maximize its usefulness.

Smart whiteboards that save to the cloudCollaborate, brainstorm, and document on one board—everything auto-saves so nothing gets lost

Explore room setups

Excludes People Who Are Not Available

Impromptu meetings often leave out people who are in other time zones, in focus blocks, or away from their desks. This can create information gaps and uneven influence, which can negatively affect team dynamics and cohesion.

Tip: When a quick ad hoc meeting happens, post a written recap and invite input from anyone who could not attend before finalizing decisions. This allows everyone to add their thoughts to the subject.

Can Lead to a Culture of Meeting Chaos

Sometimes leaders lean too heavily on ad hoc meetings, which can make everything feel urgent all the time. This is not a healthy environment to foster in the workplace.

Tip: Set explicit norms for when an ad hoc meeting is appropriate versus when to use asynchronous updates and team communications. Encourage leaders to ask and model the concept of "Can this be a message," before calling a live discussion.

6 Steps to Hold an Effective Ad Hoc Meeting

You can’t plan for everything that may or may not happen in an ad hoc meeting, but if you follow the steps below, you can make the meeting go as smoothly as possible.

1. Define The Objective

The first thing an ad hoc meeting host should do is define the problem, clarify why the meeting is urgent, and deserves a one-off meeting. This way, everyone can understand why this particular issue could not wait until the next scheduled meeting.

2. Invite Needed Guests Only

Ad hoc meetings should be quick and efficient. Anyone who doesn’t have decision-making power or project influence doesn’t need to spend their valuable time where they aren’t making an impact. They will not only be unable to help move the meeting forward, but being in the meeting will slow them down from doing the work they need to do.

3. Provide Brief Context

Ideally, context should be shared with the meeting invite so people can come to the meeting prepared to talk about the issue at hand. But the world isn’t perfect, and not everyone can brush up on the meeting topic before it’s time to start. Providing some brief context for the meeting near the beginning helps get everyone on the same page and gives attendees a couple of moments to collect their thoughts before the real problem-solving starts.

4. Set a Tight Time Limit

Due to the nature of ad hoc meetings, they should move quickly. Let people know you’re going to take a minute or two to introduce the topic, five minutes to provide extra context, open things up for 15 minutes to discuss, and move on to next steps (whatever those may look like). The point is to think and move quickly, and keeping the meeting on topic and on time helps accomplish exactly that.

5. Capture Decisions and Owners

Every action item decided upon in the ad hoc meeting should be assigned to a specific person with the responsibility to make sure it happens. If there’s a task that needs to be completed, someone should be named as the responsible party so the task doesn’t get lost.

6. Set Clear Follow-Up Timelines

Of the many tasks that may come out of an ad hoc meeting, one of them has to be follow-up. Be sure to ask questions like:

• Who is responsible for a given task?

• Who do they report to when the task is done or if they need additional help to accomplish it?

• If the task is not getting done in a certain period of time, who’s responsible for following up on it?

These questions will help provide a potentially one-off chain of command that makes things get done when they are supposed to.

Alternatives to Ad Hoc Meetings

If ad hoc meetings simply aren’t doable in a pinch, like during busy seasons or when an issue crops up that is too last-minute, here are some other options:

• Asynchronous updates: Sending concise messages to stakeholders detailing a given situation and requesting responses or decisions by a given deadline.​

• Quick record videos: Sharing a short video explanation for team members to view, and asking them to reply that day as their schedules allow.​

• Collaborative digital tools: Using platforms like Slack, Teams, Vibe Canvas, or other project management apps for immediate, real-time discussion and task assignment, especially when it comes to online collaboration.​

  Vibe's free guide for effective meetingSee our workspace solutions, features, tech specs, and more.Get My Copy

  

Vibe Board S1: The Ultimate Ad Hoc Meeting Hub

The Vibe Board S1 is the Swiss Army knife of meeting rooms, which allows both in-person, remote, and hybrid meeting attendees to work together and collaborate in ad hoc and regularly scheduled meetings alike. Vibe brings notes, visuals, and remote participants into the same shared workspace so decisions can happen without delay. Everyone has access to the same discussion, so even if someone can’t be at every ad hoc meeting, they can be just as involved in the work.

Experience how the Vibe Board S1 can revolutionize your workplace meetings firsthand by scheduling a demo.

Ad Hoc Meeting FAQs

What does "ad hoc" mean in business?

"Ad hoc" refers to something created for a specific need or moment. In business, it usually describes a one-time meeting or process formed to address an issue that is not covered in the regular workflow.

What is an example of an ad hoc meeting?

An ad hoc meeting might be a quick discussion to align on how to resolve a product issue that is blocking progress. The team gathers, agrees on the next steps, and continues working once a decision is made.

How long should ad hoc meetings last?

Ad hoc meetings are meant to be brief and focused. Many last only a few minutes and rarely need more than an hour since they address a single issue that requires fast alignment.