Ad Hoc Meeting Essentials: 7 Key Steps for Success |

Not all spontaneous meetings are bad. Sometimes, you really do need to get the right people in a (virtual) room ASAP.

But here’s the problem: most ad hoc meetings aren’t intentional. They’re rushed, unclear, and drain focus—leaving everyone wondering why this couldn’t have just been an email.

Let’s change that. With the right format, tools, and prep, impromptu gatherings can actually move things forward.

📌 The truth is, impromptu meetings have their place—but only if they’re intentional.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

• Recognize when to call an ad hoc meeting
• Avoid unnecessary interruptions by choosing the right format (async vs. live)
• Run effective ad hoc meetings that drive decisions—not just discussions
• Use digital tools like to track your meeting preparation, outcomes, and follow-up

Let’s dive into what an ad hoc meeting really means—and how it compares to regular meetings.

What Does Ad Hoc Meeting Mean?

The term “ad hoc” comes from Latin and means for this specific purpose. In a work context, an ad hoc meeting is an unplanned meeting called to handle urgent decisions, solve critical issues, or respond to external factors that require immediate action.

These meetings are not part of your regular recurring meetings or long-term planning sessions. Instead, they’re short, focused bursts of alignment—often organized when the team needs to move fast and solve a specific topic together.

📌 Example: Let’s say a major bug breaks your checkout flow just before launch. The dev lead, QA, and product manager hop on a quick Google Meet call to troubleshoot it. That’s an impromptu meeting—no formal agenda, just real-time access to the right people for a high-stakes decision.

How Is It Different from a Regular Meeting?

Here’s how a hoc meeting stacks up against a typical recurring meeting:

Parameter	Regular Meetings	Ad Hoc Meetings
Scheduling	Pre-scheduled and recurring	Called as needed with little notice
Meeting Preparation	Formal with structured agenda and materials	Minimal or no prep; often informal
Purpose	Updates, planning, and retrospectives	Time-sensitive responses to urgent issues
Duration	Typically longer and more detailed	Shorter with a narrow focus
Participants	Entire team or fixed recurring group	Just the relevant team members for that situation
Expected Outcome	Trackable decisions, new plans, or follow-ups	Rapid alignment or immediate attention to a problem
Format	In-person or virtual; structured meeting space	Flexible—can be async, sync, or even a quick Slack call

When to Use an Ad Hoc Meeting (and When to Rethink It)

Smart project managers know impromptu meetings should be a last resort—because they wreck productivity. 🧠

We do our best work when we’re in deep focus. But even a short surprise meeting can snap us out of that flow—and research shows it takes over 23 minutes to get back on track after a distraction!

So here’s the real question: Is this meeting urgent—or just a reflex?

It might feel like a quick chat will fix things fast, but sometimes it’s just a knee-jerk reaction. Before you call everyone in, ask: Is this the best way to solve the problem, or is there a smarter alternative?

These are five of the most common scenarios when an ad hoc meeting can be appropriate:

1. In the event of a crisis or emergency meeting that affects the business
2. If there are urgent information or updates that need to be shared with the team and require further explanation or discussion
3. If a sudden opportunity arises that requires swift discussion and decision-making to capitalize on
4. When immediate feedback or input is required on a pressing issue, project, or decision
5. When team alignment is necessary because an unexpected turn of events has led to confusion within the team

7 Essential Steps to Run a Productive Ad Hoc Meeting

If you don’t want your meetings to be another calendar filler, you need to ensure that your meetings are focused, effective, and beneficial for all participants.

Let’s explore the seven core steps to optimize your ad hoc meeting logistics.

Step 1: Define the objectives and prepare an agenda

Without a shared purpose, even a 10-minute hoc meeting can spiral into a distracted discussion.
Start with a clear goal. What do you want to accomplish by the end of the session? Whether the goal is quick alignment or an information gathering meeting, naming the desired outcome helps you steer the conversation.

A meeting agenda helps in prioritizing the specific topic and sets clear deliverables that need to be addressed. You don’t need a comprehensive agenda for a 15-minute sync—but listing your top 3 goals gives everyone something to anchor to.

Knowing the agenda, allows participants to gather their thoughts, relevant data, or any necessary materials, leading to an intent-focused session. At the end of the meeting, you can evaluate whether the objectives were met, or require further action.

Looking for a quick way to organize and share an agenda for your impromptu meeting? —the everything app for work—lets you create and share agendas in minutes, so your team stays aligned even on the fly.

lets you create documentation within Docs and share it both internally and externally. Attendees can use ’s interactive features, like comments or checklists, to add inputs or questions before the meeting.

The platform has a selection of free meeting and conference agenda templates that let you create a professional-looking agenda within minutes. For example, you can try the All Hands Meeting Template for company-wide scheduled meetings or the Scrum Meeting Template for impromptu sessions with smaller groups.

Step 2: Identify and notify the right participants

The right mix of people makes or breaks an ad hoc meeting. If you bring in the wrong people, they’ll feel it’s a waste of time. Miss someone crucial, and you risk leaving with half-baked decisions or needing a follow-up meeting.

Make sure to include:

• Those directly involved with or have expertise in the matter at hand
• A team member who has the authority to make decisions if the meeting’s purpose is to decide on a course of action
• Participants who can offer diverse viewpoints to avoid echo chambers
• Anyone who’ll be impacted by the outcome

Keep the group size manageable for optimal productivity, especially in virtual meetings. With , you can use the collaboration features and identify the right attendees:

Team View & Capacity
Use the Team view to see who’s assigned to which tasks and check their current workload. This makes it easier to invite only the right people—those who are both available and essential to the discussion.

Connected nSearch & People Directory
Quickly find team members by name, role, or workload using the Connected Search or People directory. This ensures you’re looping in the right contributors based on context and capacity.

Custom Notifications & Mentions
Tailor your notification preferences to avoid overload. Use @mentions in Tasks, Comments, Docs, and Chat to notify individuals or groups directly. That way, your meeting attendees are aligned before the call even begins.

Inbox & Notification Management
’s Inbox helps you stay on top of updates by bundling related notifications and letting you filter by mentions or assignments. You can also snooze items or mark them as unread to stay in control of your follow-ups.

Step 3: Encourage participation

Active participation differentiates a successful meeting from one that could’ve been an email. The main value of impromptu meetings lies in the interactive exchange of ideas and collaborative problem-solving.

You need to intentionally encourage collaboration—especially from quieter voices or team members joining from various locations.

Some ways to do this:

• Let participants share thoughts via chat, not just voice
• Create a space for async input after the call
• Use visual frameworks to keep things on track

Additionally, remote teams with overlapping work hours can find synchronous meetings difficult. In such cases, use team collaboration or daily standup software with asynchronous meetings support to facilitate every participant’s engagement. Ultimately, the goal is to create a meeting environment where everyone can contribute effectively regardless of their preferred communication style or location.

Bonus: Explore the Daily Standup Meeting Template to see that the voice of each participant gets enough visibility.

It is designed to streamline daily team check-ins by providing a centralized hub for planning, note-taking, and progress tracking. It features customizable statuses, fields, and views, enabling teams to efficiently manage tasks and monitor updates in real-time.

By replacing manual tracking methods, this template enhances transparency, accountability, and collaboration within teams.

Step 4: Manage time during the meeting

Ensuring an ad hoc meeting doesn’t overrun is crucial for maintaining efficiency and keeping participants engaged. Pay attention to these seven pointers on how to keep the session on track:

1. Start on time
2. Stick to the agenda
3. Allocate specific time slots for each agenda item
4. Consider using a timer to honor the preset slots
5. Assign someone the role of timekeeper to provide gentle reminders of the time limit
6. Encourage conciseness in speech to save time
7. Reserve the last few minutes for a quick wrap-up

With native time tracking in , you can time meetings across different platforms—desktop, mobile, or web browser with a free Chrome extension. The best part is that integrates with top meeting apps, so you can comfortably time your sessions even during a Slack huddle or Zoom meeting.

Additionally, you can use Calendar to find the best time for your unplanned meeting without overloading your team. It lets you view team schedules, block focused time, and set event-based reminders so the meeting stays on track. It’s especially useful when juggling urgent issues and deadlines across various locations.

Step 5: Document decisions and action items

Notes taken during efficient ad hoc meetings should be concise and strictly focused on critical aspects. Document all major decisions in your meeting minutes. This supports post-meeting action and serves as a recap for those who weren’t present.

Additionally, write down specific tasks to be assigned, including who is responsible for each task and the deadline.

offers a comprehensive suite of features that turn note-taking into a walk in the park. Its free meeting notes templates ensure consistency across meetings, helping maintain a standardized format for capturing key information.

With ’s AI Notetaker, you don’t have to worry about capturing everything manually. It joins your meeting automatically, records the conversation, generates concise meeting minutes, and highlights key moments like decisions, action items, and owner assignments. You can instantly turn those into tasks—complete with deadlines, assignees, and status.

It’s especially useful during impromptu meetings when you didn’t plan for detailed note-taking but still need an accurate record of what was said and what happens next.

Step 6: Assign and track follow-up tasks

As we’ve just seen, meeting minutes are closely connected to follow-up tasks. If you have tasks to assign at the end of the session, it means that the meeting wasn’t just a passive discussion forum but a catalyst for action and progress.

Use Tasks to assign fresh action items to one or more people. Team members can add comments directly on tasks, facilitating transparent collaboration.

The platform’s customizable subtasks and checklists within tasks help break down complex follow-up actions into manageable steps. Leverage Custom Fields to include specific task information (like web links or design files). Tracking tasks is easy through:

• Custom statuses—like To Do, In Progress, Done
• Over 15 views (List view, Board view, etc.)

Sometimes, a task created after a meeting is contingent upon the completion of an existing one, or an existing task now depends on a newly assigned follow-up task. Dependencies allows you to set dependencies between interconnected tasks, helping you weave follow-up tasks into the existing workflow.

Step 7: Review and reflect

The meeting is over, but was it a success? Reflecting on what worked and what didn’t is valuable for improving last-minute meetings in the future.

Collecting feedback from attendees could help you understand their perspectives and what to change next time. These are some of the questions you could ask:

• What was your overall experience of the meeting?
• What stood out to you the most?
• In your opinion, how well did the meeting achieve its objectives?
• Do you feel this meeting was necessary, or could the objectives have been achieved through other means?
• How comfortable did you feel participating in the meeting? What factors influenced your level of engagement?
• Was the meeting space comfortable?
• What could be improved to enable more effective meetings at short notice?

Looking to use the right tools for collecting feedback? You can customize Forms to include specific questions relevant to your ad hoc meeting and then simply share them with participants via a link.

Responses to feedback forms can be automatically converted into tasks in . This is particularly useful if the feedback suggests action items or areas for improvement.

3 Common Challenges with Ad Hoc Meetings [With Solutions]

How quickly your business adapts and responds to emerging situations could shape its future. Ad hoc meetings offer the agility to get the immediate response necessary for managing these situations. However, this very agility brings its own set of challenges. Let’s examine them—not just to understand their implications but to navigate them effectively.

1. Disruption to workflows

We’ve already mentioned that interruptions negatively impact productivity and reduce the ability to engage in deep work. However, they also take a toll on employee morale.

When meetings constantly interrupt focus, it creates anxiety about falling behind on critical tasks—especially if the meeting doesn’t yield a clear outcome. And if this becomes a pattern, team trust and engagement can suffer.

Solution

Block out protected focus time in Calendar using the “Busy” status or shared availability settings. This ensures no unnecessary interruptions are scheduled during your team’s peak productivity hours. You can also set quiet hours for async-only work across various locations.

2. Lack of structure

There’s nothing worse than an ad hoc meeting with no direction—just open-ended chatter and vague “we’ll circle back” conclusions. Without a clear goal, even 15-minute syncs can feel like time sinks.

This is common when a hoc meeting is triggered by external factors like a customer escalation or an internal blocker, but no one takes a moment to frame the purpose.

Solution

Even in a hurry, take a moment to outline a basic structure for the meeting. It could be as simple as defining the primary goal of the meeting and a few key discussion points.

Set a strict time limit for the meeting and stick to it. Consider asking attendees to stand up during the meeting—it may be awkward in online meetings, but it can reinvigorate everyone’s respect for time constraints. 😏

3. Overuse and dependency

Ad hoc meetings offer immediate feedback and the allure of solving urgent problems instantly, which can be appealing. New or junior managers might feel that frequent meetings are expected of them to demonstrate their proactive leadership and involvement.

They may believe that’s a way to stay connected and informed, especially if they are still building relationships with their team in remote or hybrid work environments.

Solution

Ad hoc meetings are not team building sessions. Establish clear guidelines on when to call an impromptu meeting versus when to use asynchronous communication. Your team can use project management tools like to track progress and minor issues. For instance, if a question can be resolved through quick comments or project updates in a shared document, this eliminates the need for a meeting.

Take Your Ad Hoc Meeting in the Right Direction with

Ad hoc meetings are a double-edged sword—they offer agility and focus, but can tank your team’s productivity if you’re not careful. Why not turn this challenge into an opportunity with ?

helps you go from “let’s hop on a call” to documented outcomes, assigned action items, and tracked follow-up—all in one place. No missed notes. No scattered updates. Just clear context, collaboration, and progress.

gives you everything you need to run smarter meetings—from scheduling to summaries. That means fewer delays, more alignment, and serious time saved.

👉 Sign up for today—free forever!

FAQs

What does an ad hoc meeting mean?

An ad hoc meeting is an unplanned meeting called to address a specific topic that requires immediate action. The term ad hoc comes from Latin and means “for this purpose.” These meetings are usually triggered by urgent issues, unexpected updates, or fast-moving opportunities.

📌 What is an example of an ad hoc meeting?

A product manager calls a last-minute sync with the dev and QA team to resolve a critical issue discovered right before launch. There’s no scheduled invite—just a quick, focused discussion to align and decide on next steps. That’s an impromptu meeting, or in this case, an ad hoc meeting.

What does ad hoc mean in work?

In the workplace, ad hoc describes anything created for a one-time event or temporary need. An ad hoc task, committee, or meeting exists to solve a specific problem—not as part of a routine process.

Why is it called ad hoc?

Ad hoc is Latin for “for this.” It’s used in business to describe solutions, meetings, or decisions made on the spot to handle unexpected situations or time-sensitive problems.

When should I not schedule an ad hoc meeting?

Avoid scheduling one if:

• The issue isn’t urgent or important
• It can be resolved through a summary email or async project update
• The necessary participants aren’t available
• You’re reacting emotionally rather than responding strategically

Use a quick checklist or the Eisenhower Matrix to validate the need.

How do I document ad hoc meetings?

Use a simple, focused structure that includes:

• Main discussion points
• Decisions made
• Follow-up tasks with owners and deadlines
• Any blockers or dependencies

💡 Pro Tip: Try the AI Notetaker to record your meeting, generate meeting minutes, and auto-create action items from the transcript.

What’s the difference between ad hoc meetings and regular recurring meetings?

Ad Hoc Meetings	Regular Recurring Meetings
Unscheduled and reactive	Scheduled at set intervals (e.g., weekly)
Called for specific, urgent needs	Used for planning, check-ins, or updates
Short, focused, and flexible	Typically longer and more structured
Limited to only relevant attendees	Usually includes the same group

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