Naomi Chavez, an internal consultant for Cisco Systems, one of Silicon Valley's leading network-equipment manufacturers, is frustrated: "We have the most ineffective meetings of any visitor I've ever seen."

Kevin Eassa, vice president of operations for the deejay division of Conner Peripherals, some other Silicon Valley behemothic, is realistically resigned: "We realize our meetings are unproductive. A consulting business firm is trying to assistance us, and we think they've striking the mark. But nosotros've got a long manner to go."

Richard Collard, senior director of network operations at Federal Express, is but exasperated: "We only seem to meet and encounter and run into and we never seem to do annihilation."

Meetings are the almost universal — and universally despised — role of concern life. Just bad meetings do more than ruin an otherwise pleasant day. William R. Daniels, senior consultant at American Consulting & Training of Mill Valley, California, has introduced meeting-improvement techniques to companies including Applied Materials and Motorola. He is adamant about the existent stakes: bad meetings make bad companies.

"Meetings matter because that's where an organisation'southward culture perpetuates itself," he says. "Meetings are how an arrangement says, 'You lot are a member.' So if every twenty-four hour period nosotros go to ho-hum meetings full of ho-hum people, so we can't help but think that this is a boring company. Bad meetings are a source of negative messages about our company and ourselves."

It'south not supposed to be this way. In a business world that is faster, tougher, leaner, and more downsized than ever, you might wait the sheer demands of competition (not to mention the touch of e-post and groupware) to curb our appetite for meetings. In reality, the opposite may be true. As more piece of work becomes teamwork, and fewer people remain to do the work that exists, the number of meetings is likely to increase rather than decrease. Jon Ryburg, president of the Facility Performance Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is an organizational psychologist who advises companies on office design and "meeting ergonomics." He tells his clients that they demand twice as much meeting space as they did 20 years agone. The reason? "More than and more companies are team-based companies, and in squad-based companies well-nigh work gets done in meetings."

A diversity of tools and techniques (plus a salubrious dose of common sense) can make meetings less painful, more productive, maybe even fun. There's also an important role for engineering science, although the undeniable ability of computer-enabled meeting systems usually comes with astronomical price tags. Still, there's lots to larn from electronic "meetingware" even if you never buy it. What follows is Fast Visitor's guide to the vii sins of deadly meetings and, more than important, vii steps to salvation.

Sin #1: People don't take meetings seriously. They arrive late, go out early, and spend virtually of their time doodling.

Salvation: Prefer Intel's mind-set that meetings are existent work.

In that location are as many techniques to improve the "crispness" of meetings as there are items on the typical coming together calendar. Some companies punish latecomers with a penalty fee or reprimand them in the minutes of the meeting. Simply these techniques address symptoms, not the disease. Disciplined meetings are well-nigh heed-prepare — a shared conviction among all the participants that meetings are real piece of work. That all-as well-frequent expression of relief — "Coming together's over, let's get back to piece of work" — is the mortal enemy of good meetings.

"Most people simply don't view going to meetings as doing work," says William Daniels. "You accept to brand your meetings uptime rather than downtime."

Is there a company with the right mind-set? Daniels nominates Intel, the semiconductor manufacturer famous for its managerial toughness and crisp execution. Walk into any briefing room at any Intel manufacturing plant or office anywhere in the earth and you will see on the wall a poster with a series of elementary questions about the meetings that have place there. Do you know the purpose of this meeting? Practise you accept an calendar? Exercise you know your office? Do y'all follow the rules for good minutes?

These posters are a visual reminder of just how serious Intel is about productive meetings. Indeed, every new employee, from the almost junior production worker to the highest ranking executive, is required to take the company'southward home-grown course on effective meetings. For years the course was taught by CEO Andy Grove himself, who believed that good meetings were such an important function of Intel'southward culture that it was worth his time to train the troops. "We talk a lot about meeting bailiwick," says Michael Fors, corporate grooming managing director at Intel Academy. "It isn't complicated. It's doing the nuts well: structured agendas, clear goals, paths that yous're going to follow. These things make a huge difference."

Sin #2: Meetings are likewise long. They should accomplish twice as much in half the time.

Salvation: Time is money. Track the price of your meetings and use figurer- enabled simultaneity to brand them more productive.

Near every guru invokes the same rule: meetings should concluding no longer than 90 minutes. When'due south the last time your visitor held to that rule?

One reason meetings drag on is that people don't appreciate how expensive they are. James B. Rieley, director of the Center for Continuous Quality Comeback at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, recently decided to change all that. He did a survey of the college'southward 130-person management quango to find out how much fourth dimension its members spent in meetings. When he multiplied their time by their salaries, he adamant that the college was spending $3 1000000 per year on direction-council meetings alone. Money talks: later Rieley's study came out, the college trained xl people as facilitators to keep meetings on runway. Bernard DeKoven, founder of the Establish for Better Meetings in Palo Alto, California, has gone Rieley 1 pace improve. He's developed software chosen the Meeting Meter that allows whatsoever squad or department to calculate, on a running basis, how much their meetings cost. Subsequently someone inputs the names and salaries of meeting participants, the programme starts ticking. Remember of it every bit a national debt clock for meetings.

DeKoven emphasizes that he created the Meeting Meter as a chat slice rather than as a serious management tool. Information technology's a visible way to put meeting productivity on the agenda. "When I utilise the meter, I don't merely talk about the price of meetings," he says, "I talk about the cost of bad meetings. Because bad meetings pb to even more meetings, and over time the costs become awe-inspiring."

Technology can do more than just go along meetings shorter. It can also increase productivity — that is, aid generate more than ideas and decisions per minute. One of the main benefits of meetingware is that it allows participants to violate the first rule of good behavior in most other circumstances: wait your plough to speak. With Ventana'southward GroupSystems V, the nearly powerful meeting software bachelor today, participants enter their comments and ideas into workstations. The workstations organize the comments and project them onto a monitor for the whole group to come across. Virtually everyone who has studied or participated in computer-enabled meetings agrees that this capacity for simultaneity produces dramatic gains in the number of ideas and the speed with which they are generated.

Geoff Bywater, senior vice president of marketing and promotion for FoxMusic, recently organized a strategic retreat for the 170 top executives of 20th Century Fox Filmed Amusement. He used a computer system supplied by CoVision, a San Francisco consulting firm that specializes in engineering science-enabled meetings. Apple PowerBooks outfitted with customized software allowed participants to respond to questions, propose ideas, and vote on options — all at the same fourth dimension.

"We had 170 of the brightest people in the visitor in one room," Bywater reports. "The claiming was, how much data and how many ideas could nosotros go out of them? Even if we had divided into xv breakout groups, we'd still accept only 15 people speaking at the aforementioned time. People were amazed. If we asked a question and each person typed in 2 ideas, that'southward nearly 350 ideas in v minutes! That was the biggest impact of the applied science – the number of ideas generated in such a short fourth dimension."

Be warned, though: electronic meetings can exist more productive than traditional meetings, but they're non ever shorter. "The good news about computer-supported meetings is that the discussions tend not to be repetitive or redundant," says Michael Schrage, a consultant on collaborative technologies and the writer of No More Teams!, an influential guide to group piece of work and meetings. "The bad news is that the meetings can become longer. The computer-supported environment encourages people to discuss things a little more than thoroughly than they might otherwise."

Sin #iii: People wander off the topic. Participants spend more time digressing than discussing.

Salvation: Get serious nigh agendas and shop distractions in a "parking lot." Information technology'south the starting indicate for all advice on productive meetings: stick to the agenda. But it's hard to stick to an agenda that doesn't exist, and near meetings in most companies are incomparably agenda-free. "In the existent world," says Schrage, "agendas are about as rare as the white rhinoceros. If they practice exist, they're almost as useful. Who hasn't been in meetings where someone tries to evidence that the agenda isn't advisable?"

Agendas are worth taking seriously. Intel is fanatical most them; information technology has developed an agenda "template" that anybody in the visitor uses. Much of the template is unsurprising. An Intel agenda (circulated several days before a meeting to allow participants react to and modify it) lists the coming together's key topics, who will lead which parts of the discussion, how long each segment will take, what the expected outcomes are, and so on.

Intel agendas also specify the coming together's decision-making style. The visitor distinguishes among four approaches to decisions: authoritative (the leader has full responsibility); consultative (the leader makes a conclusion after weighing group input); voting; and consensus. Beingness clear and upward-front about decision styles, Intel believes, sets the right expectations and helps focus the conversation.

"Going into the meeting, people know how they're giving input and how that input will get rolled up into a conclusion," says Intel's Michael Fors. "If you don't accept structured agendas, and people aren't sure of the decision path, they'll bring up side issues that are related but not directly relevant to solving the problem."

Of course, even the best-crafted agendas tin't guard against digressions, distractions, and the other foibles of human interaction. The challenge is to continue meetings focused without stifling creativity or insulting participants who stray. At Ameritech, the regional telephone company based in Chicago, meeting leaders utilize a "parking lot" to maintain that focus.

"When comments come up that aren't related to the effect at paw, nosotros record them on a flip chart labeled the parking lot," says Kimberly Thomas, managing director of communications for small-scale business organisation services. Simply the parking lot isn't a black hole. "Nosotros always rails the issue and the person responsible for it," she adds. "We use this technique throughout the company."

Sin #4: Nothing happens once the meeting ends. People don't convert decisions into action.

Salvation: Convert from "coming together" to "doing" and focus on common documents.

The problem isn't that people are lazy or irresponsible. It's that people leave meetings with different views of what happened and what'due south supposed to happen next. Meeting experts are unanimous on this point: fifty-fifty with the ubiquitous tools of organization and sharing ideas — whiteboards, flip charts, Post-it notes — the chapters for misunderstanding is unlimited. Which is some other reason companies turn to reckoner technology.

The all-time mode to avert that misunderstanding is to catechumen from "meeting" to "doing" — where the "doing" focuses on the cosmos of shared documents that lead to action. The fact is, at near powerful role for applied science is also the simplest: recording comments, outlining ideas, generating written proposals, projecting them for the unabridged grouping to see, printing them so people go out with real-fourth dimension minutes. Forget groupware; just get yourself a expert outlining program and oversized monitor.

"You lot're not just having a meeting, you're creating a document," says Michael Schrage. " I can't emphasize enough the importance of that stardom. It is the cardinal deviation betwixt ordinary meetings and reckoner-augmented collaborations. Comments, questions, criticisms, insights should enhance the quality of the certificate. That should exist the group's mission."

In other words, the medium is the coming together. That'due south why Bernard DeKovan prefers computers to flip charts and whiteboards. "Flip charts create behaviors conditioned by the medium," he says. "People start competing for room on the flip chart, the facilitator has to scratch affair out, and pretty soon y'all can't read what's on information technology. With a calculator, you never run out of room for ideas, you tin edit indefinitely, you can generate difficult copies for everyone at a moment'due south observe. It'southward a much richer medium."

Sin #5: People don't tell the truth. There'south plenty of conversation, only not much candor.

Salvation: Cover anonymity.

We all know it's true: Too often, people in meetings simply don't speak their minds. Sometimes the trouble is a leader who doesn't solicit participation. Sometimes a dominant personality intimidates the remainder of the grouping. But about of the fourth dimension the problem is a elementary lack of trust. People don't experience secure enough to say what they really retrieve.

The well-nigh powerful techniques to promote candor rely on technology, and most of these computer-based tools focus on anonymity — enabling people to express opinions and evaluate alternatives without having to divulge their identities. It'due south a sobering commentary on complimentary speech communication in business — "Say what you call up, and we'll disguise your names to protect the innocent" — but it does seem to work.

Jay Nunamaker, CEO of Ventana Corporation, based in Tucson, Arizona, and a professor at the Academy of Arizona's Karl Eller Graduate Schoolhouse of Direction, is a leading expert on electronic meetings. He says Ventana added anonymity to its software to meet the needs of the U.Southward. armed forces. "Admirals tin can really dampen interaction at a meeting," he notes. "But nosotros didn't realize the bear on information technology would accept in corporate settings. Even with people who work together all the time, anonymity changes the social protocols. People say things differently." CoVision, the business firm that facilitated the 20th Century Fox meeting, provides a system that allows for anonymous voting and anonymous group conversations. Meeting participants enter comments onto laptops, and the comments are projected onto a screen without attribution. CoVision president Lenny Lind says the system is especially powerful in meetings of high-ranking executives.

"People in the upper reaches of management pay and so much deference to the leader, and have and then much to lose, that conversations apace get measured and political," he argues. "People just won't bare their souls. Anonymity changes that."

Only there are problems with anonymity. Some people like getting credit for their ideas, and anonymity can go out them feeling shortchanged. There are too opportunities for manipulation. Carol Anne Ogdin of Deep Woods Applied science, a teamwork consultant and meeting facilitator based in Santa Clara, California, calls anonymity a "pocket-size thought that's been blown out of proportion." In particular, she worries most gamesmanship – for instance, people who build an anonymous groundswell of support for their own contributions.

Sin #6: Meetings are always missing important information, and then they postpone critical decisions.

Salvation: Become data, not simply article of furniture, into meeting rooms.

Well-nigh coming together rooms make it harder to have good meetings. They're sterile and uninviting — and often in the middle of nowhere. Why? To assistance people "concentrate" past removing them from the frenzy of office life. Only this isolation leaves meeting rooms out of the information menses. Ofttimes, the downside of isolation outweighs the benefits of focus.

Calculator-services giant EDS has built a ready of loftier-tech facilities that leave meetings participants brimful in data. These much-heralded Capture Labs, electronic meeting rooms used by the company and its clients, may offer a glimpse of the meeting room of the hereafter.

The Capture Lab "is a self-contained data network," says Michael Bauer, a primary with EDS'southward management consulting subsidiary. "We tin bring in information from the Net or from EDS's internal Spider web. Nosotros can get information on stock prices, even about the weather if we're worried well-nigh shipping or travel. Information technology'south brought into the room, displayed on a screen, and talked about."

Information technology'southward not necessary to go that far. Jon Ryburg, the meeting ergonomist, offers a few ways to increase the "data quotient" in coming together spaces. For one matter, allow enough infinite in your meeting rooms for teams to store materials. Project teams generate lots more than minutes and memos. Meetings build models, fill upward flip charts, create artifacts of all sorts – "data" that'south vital to future meetings. "People are constantly hauling materials to and from coming together rooms," Ryburg says. "It'due south much easier to merely store things for later meetings."

William Miller, managing director of research and business organization development for Steelcase, the office-piece of furniture manufacturer based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, emphasizes that mobility is about more than convenience. The radical redesign of work, he argues, requires a radical redesign of meeting space.

"Cognition workers spend 80% of their time at the office away from their desks," Miller says. "Where are they? Working on projects. The style to support that work is to build project clusters and co-locate desks around them. Yous tin can post information and never take it down. We phone call it 'information persistence.' And we don't talk about meetings. We talk about 'interactions.' It's part of the new science of constructive work."

Sin #7: Meetings never get amend. People make the aforementioned mistakes.

Salvation: Practice makes perfect. Monitor what works and what doesn't and agree people answerable.

Meetings are like any other part of business organisation life: yous get better only if you commit to information technology — and aim high. Charles Schwab & Co., the financial-services company based in San Francisco, has made that commitment. In virtually every meeting at Schwab, someone serves equally an "observer" and creates what the company calls a Plus/Delta listing. The list records what went right and what went wrong, and gets included in the minutes. Over time, both for specific coming together groups and for the company as a whole, these lists create an agenda for change.

How much can meetings improve? The last word goes to Bernard DeKoven: "People don't have good meetings because they don't know what good meetings are similar. Good meetings aren't just about piece of work. They're almost fun — keeping people charged upwardly. It'south more than collaboration, it'south 'coliberation' — people freeing each other up to remember more creatively."

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