I would add that you can try having a “stand up” meeting. This is a meeting where nobody sits. It minimizes idleness and makes people motivated to end the meeting quicker!

I saw this yesterday and thought I would share: http://despair.com/meetings.html.

Lorna – that’s great. So, so, so true…

Ben,

This is a great post! Sometimes I feel like half of my waking hours are devoted to avoiding meetings. So little gets done there. The worst is when you’re telecommuting and people want to drag you into the office for a “necessary” meeting. Fun!

Take care,
Andrew

Sounds like a very manager x type approach. They’re dumb and won’t pay attention or care about meetings. So, we’re going to impose how it’s done.
Which is necessary for some people, but u might want to put in the caveat that it’s not applicable to all management situations.

#8 – Don’t expand the meeting to fill the timeslot.
Good tips, but I have to say that when I had a job, I loved boring meetings

Great advice. I do think though that #5 should have some margin to bend. Some of the best thought-inspiring meetings I’ve been in have had a broad, over-arching agenda, but enough room for people to speak their mind and brainstorm. Few things are worse than staff who are unable to speak their minds because of a strict adherence to an agenda. Let staff open up and sidetrack once in awhile, then when it becomes counter-productive, pull everyone back to the center.

If you can, stand up during the meeting. For some reason, this seems to speed them up, even if you arent next to a door.

Jon – shame on you for loving boring meetings! *laugh*

Michael – I understand what you’re saying. For me, it depends on the team. If they can handle the flexibility – more importantly if the leader of the meeting can handle the flexibility and control the meeting – it can work very well to have a looser agenda. If not, you get either chaos or atrophy.

Ann – interesting tip. I’ll give it a try next time. Maybe you command a bit more attention + focus while standing and it’s harder to type on your BlackBerry under the desk while standing…

Ben, I’ve discovered that many come to meetings with agendas to crawl to the top at the expense of others. A different approach in coming to meetings is to lift up others who contribute great ideas rather than attempting to lift up oneself. What a difference it can make to your already great approaches for a successful committee meeting.

Nice post, Ben. I would add that it’s important that somone in charge act as a moderator for the meeting to keep it on task. I take on this role with every client meeting I have. And when we go off topic, I know that I’m the one responsible for bring it back.

I’ve played this role in strategic planning and organizational development meetings for larger organizations where you might have 20 principles in the meeting – all wanting to be heard. At that point, it’s vital to have someone as moderator. And it should be known who that person is and their responsibilities before the meeting begins.

Dawud – I agree.

The point is really – “Too many chiefs never works.” You need people who are participating not all trying to lead.

I knew I was in trouble when I found myself in meetings about meetings or in other meetings where I sat for most of it wondering what the meeting was about.

This issue is the number one source of pain and sense of being out of control for my executive clients.

Thought you might like this post that sums up the kind of people who inhabit meetings:

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/11/17/meeting_creatures.html

Ha! Engtech – that’s a great post. Laptop Larry is a bastard…but so are most of the others too…hhhmmm…

Great tips, thank you! Managing the meetings with purpose and establishing a decision making process upfront with clearly identified and agreed roles has worked for me. I have talked more about those tools in my post:

http://blog.kitetail.com/2006/12/01/death-by-a-thousand-meetings/

Binnur – thanks for the link and commenting. I agree with you that setting up roles and decision making processes helps – although we all know how things can collapse quickly!

Nice note about meetings. I’ve been in so many pointless meetings… used to drive me nuts.

Good point about the documentation. I use a software called meetings sense (http://www.meetingsense.com) which has automated the whole process. It also gives the option of setting a firm agenda to stop the soapboxers in their tracks

sorry, link didn’t work

http://www.meetingsense.com

I just hate those meetings where the topic just diverted into no where and people just argue with each other over pointless things… Great article!

lol this is really good thanks for posting this i have to use these

I thought this was gonna tell how to avoid going to pointless meetings.