I actually believe most small companies have too few meetings. As a result effort is wasted, ideas aren’t shared, mistakes take too long to correct, and the cost is high.

The problem is that most meetings are run so poorly they are actually worse than no meeting at all.

The solution is to figure out what you want to accomplish in the meeting and design the entire meeting for that purpose. Insist that the right people be there and enforce the right behavior (starting with yourself). For some kinds of meetings having them at a regular time with a set agenda actually saves time because stuff people would interrupt you with waits for the meeting.

Takeaways:

• How to Run a Better Meeting from 43folders.com
• 8 Types of Meeting Attendees from Jonathan Grubb
• A Meeting Agenda form I designed for a client (with generic notes). Half the power of a meeting is what gets written down and followed up. This form makes that easy.