Most people in medium and large businesses, government, non-profits and other organizations spend the majority of their time in meetings. As managers and executives, their most valuable resource is their time and that of their people. And yet more time is wasted in unproductive meetings than all other activities combined. Making meetings more productive is one of the most important thinks and any business or other organization can do. There are six key steps to making meetings more effective.

People. Insure that the right people are at the meeting. That they are there on time and that they focus on the meeting rather than taking cell phone calls and doing their e-mail. As much as people complain about meetings, people hate to feel they are missing something important. They feel excluded. It is critical that only the people who need to be at meetings attend them. Presenters who are not key participants should attend meetings only to give their presentations.

Purpose. While most meetings have a purpose, that purpose must be clearly stated in the meeting invitation and again at the beginning of the meeting. Someone should be designated to keep the meeting focused on that purpose. Any issues that arise that are not tied to the purpose should be noted and captured for another appropriate meeting. Also, at the end of the meeting, the purpose of the meeting should be stated again prior to the attendees leaving. Invitation Opening Stay on Topic Closing.

Meeting type. Within the purpose, there are three types of meetings. Meetings must to be limited to information, decision making or idea floating. Informational meetings are those where people present new information to the group. These meetings need to leave time for questions. Decision making meetings are those where issues have been previously raised, recommended courses of action presented and decisions must be made by the body. The decisions must be documented. The final type of meeting is what we call an idea floating session. At these meetings, a pertinent issue or issues are raised and the people attending the meeting provide recommendations to address the issue or issues. These are then documented with owners to take the recommendations the next step.

Time. No meeting should last longer than one hour. Period. Meetings that last longer than an hour are not productive, they lose focus, they take on additional topics and purposes and they become forums for grand standing. People should arrive at the meeting on time. The meeting should start on time. There should be no more than five minutes to review the purpose of the meeting, who is attending and their role in the meeting plus the agenda for the meeting, which should have been distributed in advance. The meeting should cover the entire agenda in the next fifty minutes. The final five minutes should be used to recap the decisions, who will distribute the notes from the meeting and when the next meeting is scheduled. The meeting should end within the hour and not over. It is ideal to keep the meeting to 55 minutes including the opening and closing comments so people can be on time for their next meeting (on the hour) and are not distracted.

Document. Someone should be charged with documenting the purpose of the meeting, who attended it, the decisions made, any open issues and who owns action on them and when the next meeting will be held. Anything else in the notes is excessive. The notes should be distributed electronically within twenty-four hours only to the attendees. There is a habit of forward meeting minutes to the world up and down the chain of command. This serves little purpose and bogs down future meetings and creates excessive and unproductive work for all involved.

Follow-up. It is up to the meeting lead (or chair) to insure that all items decided at the meeting including the open issues are either closed or a recommendation made by the owners of the issues. Often, issues remain open for months if not years. It is up to the owner of each issue to do whatever is required to bring them to closure or recommended next (action) step.

Considering that meetings take the majority of managers and executives time during any given day, it is essential for them to take steps to make meetings more productive. By focusing on the critical elements of effective meetings, this can be done immediately. The key elements include: the right people, a clear purpose, a limited amount of time (and on time), documenting decisions and owners and follow-up. These simple but seldom followed steps will make any organization more effective and improve job satisfaction for the participants.