We all go to too many meetings. We get too little done in them. We wonder why we were invited. And even worse – we wonder what the person who called the meeting thinks was accomplished after it was all over.
Sometimes in a meeting I’ll entertain myself by guessing how much it is costing per minute for the whole roomful of people to be there. The guestimates of each person’s salary takes a while, and all the calculating or scribbling to get to a per minute cost fills up some time and tends to ward off sleepiness. When it’s all over I race back to do my “real” work. 
It doesn’t have to be this way. Meetings can be much more effective if the person calling them has a clear purpose, agenda, specific reason for inviting each attendee, and a clear way of documenting decisions and follow-up items. Partick Lencioni does a good (although lengthy for my taste) job at putting some structure to the meeting process in his book, Death by Meeting.
But a lot has to do with communication by the leader or facilitator. Yesterday’s WSJ had an article about the techniques companies are using in attempts to conduct better, more productive meetings. (non-members click on Corporate Meetings Go Through A Makeover) It seems that some companies, such as Intel, train employees to conduct better meetings. Not a bad idea. Nobody learned how to prepare an agenda or lead a meeting discussion in college. Actually those who are best at it just seem to have the personality and organizational ability to be stars at it.
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