Naomi Chavez, an internal consultant for Cisco Systems, one of Silicon Valley'due south leading network-equipment manufacturers, is frustrated: "We have the most ineffective meetings of whatever company I've always seen."

Kevin Eassa, vice president of operations for the deejay segmentation of Conner Peripherals, another Silicon Valley giant, is realistically resigned: "Nosotros realize our meetings are unproductive. A consulting firm is trying to help us, and we think they've hit the mark. But we've got a long manner to get."

Richard Collard, senior managing director of network operations at Federal Express, is simply exasperated: "We only seem to run across and meet and come across and nosotros never seem to exercise anything."

Meetings are the most universal — and universally despised — function of business life. But bad meetings do more than ruin an otherwise pleasant twenty-four hour period. William R. Daniels, senior consultant at American Consulting & Training of Mill Valley, California, has introduced coming together-improvement techniques to companies including Applied Materials and Motorola. He is determined most the real stakes: bad meetings make bad companies.

"Meetings matter because that'due south where an organization'southward civilization perpetuates itself," he says. "Meetings are how an organization says, 'Y'all are a fellow member.' Then if every day we go to boring meetings full of boring people, then nosotros can't assistance merely recollect that this is a boring visitor. Bad meetings are a source of negative messages about our company and ourselves."

It's non supposed to be this mode. In a business world that is faster, tougher, bacteria, and more than downsized than always, you lot might expect the sheer demands of competition (not to mention the bear upon of electronic mail and groupware) to curb our appetite for meetings. In reality, the opposite may exist true. Equally more work becomes teamwork, and fewer people remain to do the piece of 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 pattern and "coming together ergonomics." He tells his clients that they demand twice as much meeting space as they did xx years agone. The reason? "More and more than companies are squad-based companies, and in team-based companies well-nigh piece of work gets done in meetings."

A diversity of tools and techniques (plus a healthy dose of common sense) tin make meetings less painful, more productive, perhaps even fun. There's also an of import function for engineering, although the undeniable power of computer-enabled coming together systems usually comes with astronomical price tags. Still, there's lots to acquire from electronic "meetingware" even if y'all never purchase it. What follows is Fast Company's guide to the seven sins of deadly meetings and, more important, seven steps to conservancy.

Sin #ane: People don't take meetings seriously. They arrive tardily, leave early on, and spend most of their fourth dimension doodling.

Conservancy: Adopt Intel'south mind-ready that meetings are real work.

At that place are as many techniques to better the "crispness" of meetings every bit there are items on the typical meeting agenda. Some companies punish latecomers with a penalisation fee or reprimand them in the minutes of the meeting. Simply these techniques address symptoms, not the disease. Disciplined meetings are about mind-set — a shared conviction amidst all the participants that meetings are existent work. That all-also-frequent expression of relief — "Meeting'southward over, let's go back to work" — is the mortal enemy of practiced meetings.

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

Is in that location a company with the right listen-set? Daniels nominates Intel, the semiconductor manufacturer famous for its managerial toughness and well-baked execution. Walk into any conference room at any Intel factory or office anywhere in the world and you will see on the wall a poster with a series of simple questions near the meetings that take place there. Do yous know the purpose of this meeting? Practice you lot have an agenda? Do you know your role? Exercise 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 virtually junior production worker to the highest ranking executive, is required to take the company'due south habitation-grown grade on constructive meetings. For years the course was taught by CEO Andy Grove himself, who believed that skilful meetings were such an important role of Intel'due south culture that it was worth his time to train the troops. "We talk a lot about coming together subject area," says Michael Fors, corporate training managing director at Intel University. "Information technology isn't complicated. It's doing the nuts well: structured agendas, clear goals, paths that you're going to follow. These things brand a huge difference."

Sin #2: Meetings are too long. They should accomplish twice every bit much in half the time.

Conservancy: Fourth dimension is coin. Runway the cost of your meetings and use computer- enabled simultaneity to make them more than productive.

Most every guru invokes the same rule: meetings should last no longer than 90 minutes. When's the last time your company held to that rule?

One reason meetings drag on is that people don't capeesh how expensive they are. James B. Rieley, director of the Middle for Continuous Quality Improvement at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, recently decided to change all that. He did a survey of the college's 130-person management council to observe out how much time its members spent in meetings. When he multiplied their time by their salaries, he adamant that the higher was spending $3 million per year on management-council meetings alone. Coin talks: after Rieley's study came out, the college trained 40 people as facilitators to keep meetings on runway. Bernard DeKoven, founder of the Institute for Better Meetings in Palo Alto, California, has gone Rieley one pace meliorate. He'south developed software called the Meeting Meter that allows whatsoever team or department to calculate, on a running ground, how much their meetings cost. After someone inputs the names and salaries of meeting participants, the programme starts ticking. Think of it as 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. It'due south a visible way to put coming together productivity on the agenda. "When I use the meter, I don't just talk about the toll of meetings," he says, "I talk about the cost of bad meetings. Because bad meetings atomic number 82 to even more than meetings, and over fourth dimension the costs get awe-inspiring."

Applied science can practise more than just keep meetings shorter. It tin can besides increment productivity — that is, help generate more ideas and decisions per minute. I of the chief benefits of meetingware is that it allows participants to violate the kickoff dominion of good behavior in most other circumstances: wait your turn to speak. With Ventana'south GroupSystems 5, the most powerful meeting software available today, participants enter their comments and ideas into workstations. The workstations organize the comments and projection them onto a monitor for the whole group to see. Virtually anybody 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 Flim-flam Filmed Entertainment. He used a computer system supplied by CoVision, a San Francisco consulting firm that specializes in applied science-enabled meetings. Apple PowerBooks outfitted with customized software allowed participants to reply to questions, propose ideas, and vote on options — all at the same time.

"We had 170 of the brightest people in the company in one room," Bywater reports. "The challenge was, how much data and how many ideas could we become out of them? Even if we had divided into 15 breakout groups, we'd still have but xv people speaking at the same time. People were amazed. If we asked a question and each person typed in ii ideas, that's almost 350 ideas in five minutes! That was the biggest impact of the engineering science – the number of ideas generated in such a short time."

Be warned, though: electronic meetings can be more productive than traditional meetings, but they're non ever shorter. "The proficient 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 author of No More Teams!, an influential guide to group work and meetings. "The bad news is that the meetings can go longer. The computer-supported surround encourages people to discuss things a little more thoroughly than they might otherwise."

Sin #three: People wander off the topic. Participants spend more fourth dimension digressing than discussing.

Conservancy: Get serious about agendas and shop distractions in a "parking lot." It'south the starting betoken for all communication on productive meetings: stick to the calendar. Merely it'due south difficult to stick to an calendar that doesn't exist, and most meetings in virtually companies are decidedly agenda-gratuitous. "In the real world," says Schrage, "agendas are well-nigh as rare as the white rhino. If they do exist, they're well-nigh as useful. Who hasn't been in meetings where someone tries to prove that the agenda isn't appropriate?"

Agendas are worth taking seriously. Intel is fanatical nearly them; it has developed an agenda "template" that everyone in the company uses. Much of the template is unsurprising. An Intel agenda (circulated several days earlier a meeting to let participants react to and modify it) lists the meeting's central topics, who will atomic number 82 which parts of the discussion, how long each segment will take, what the expected outcomes are, and so on.

Intel agendas also specify the meeting's decision-making mode. The visitor distinguishes amid 4 approaches to decisions: authoritative (the leader has total responsibility); consultative (the leader makes a determination afterwards weighing group input); voting; and consensus. Being articulate and up-front near determination 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 volition get rolled upwardly into a decision," says Intel's Michael Fors. "If you don't have structured agendas, and people aren't sure of the decision path, they'll bring upwardly side issues that are related but non directly relevant to solving the problem."

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

"When comments come up that aren't related to the issue at hand, nosotros tape them on a flip chart labeled the parking lot," says Kimberly Thomas, director of communications for minor concern services. Only the parking lot isn't a blackness hole. "Nosotros always track the issue and the person responsible for information technology," she adds. "We employ this technique throughout the visitor."

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

Salvation: Catechumen from "meeting" to "doing" and focus on common documents.

The problem isn't that people are lazy or irresponsible. Information technology'due south that people leave meetings with different views of what happened and what's supposed to happen side by side. Meeting experts are unanimous on this point: even with the ubiquitous tools of organization and sharing ideas — whiteboards, flip charts, Post-information technology notes — the capacity for misunderstanding is unlimited. Which is another reason companies plow to estimator engineering science.

The best way to avoid that misunderstanding is to catechumen from "meeting" to "doing" — where the "doing" focuses on the creation of shared documents that lead to action. The fact is, at most powerful part for technology is also the simplest: recording comments, outlining ideas, generating written proposals, projecting them for the unabridged grouping to see, printing them and so people exit with real-time minutes. Forget groupware; but get yourself a proficient outlining program and oversized monitor.

"You're not simply having a coming together, y'all're creating a document," says Michael Schrage. " I can't emphasize enough the importance of that distinction. It is the fundamental difference between ordinary meetings and computer-augmented collaborations. Comments, questions, criticisms, insights should enhance the quality of the document. That should exist the grouping'due south mission."

In other words, the medium is the meeting. That'southward 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 presently yous can't read what's on information technology. With a computer, you never run out of room for ideas, you can edit indefinitely, y'all can generate hard copies for everyone at a moment's notice. Information technology's a much richer medium."

Sin #5: People don't tell the truth. At that place'south enough of conversation, but non much candor.

Salvation: Embrace anonymity.

We all know information technology's truthful: As well often, people in meetings merely don't speak their minds. Sometimes the trouble is a leader who doesn't solicit participation. Sometimes a ascendant personality intimidates the rest of the group. Merely nigh of the fourth dimension the trouble is a unproblematic lack of trust. People don't feel secure enough to say what they really think.

The virtually powerful techniques to promote candor rely on technology, and about of these computer-based tools focus on anonymity — enabling people to limited opinions and evaluate alternatives without having to divulge their identities. Information technology'southward a sobering commentary on gratuitous speech in business — "Say what you call up, and we'll disguise your names to protect the innocent" — but it does seem to piece of work.

Jay Nunamaker, CEO of Ventana Corporation, based in Tucson, Arizona, and a professor at the University of Arizona's Karl Eller Graduate School of Management, is a leading expert on electronic meetings. He says Ventana added anonymity to its software to see the needs of the U.S. military. "Admirals can really dampen interaction at a meeting," he notes. "But we didn't realize the impact information technology would have in corporate settings. Fifty-fifty with people who work together all the time, anonymity changes the social protocols. People say things differently." CoVision, the firm that facilitated the 20th Century Play tricks meeting, provides a system that allows for bearding 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 loftier-ranking executives.

"People in the upper reaches of management pay so much deference to the leader, and accept so much to lose, that conversations quickly become measured and political," he argues. "People simply won't bare their souls. Anonymity changes that."

Merely there are issues with anonymity. Some people similar getting credit for their ideas, and anonymity can leave them feeling shortchanged. In that location are as well opportunities for manipulation. Carol Anne Ogdin of Deep Wood Engineering, a teamwork consultant and meeting facilitator based in Santa Clara, California, calls anonymity a "modest idea that's been blown out of proportion." In particular, she worries about gamesmanship – for example, people who build an anonymous groundswell of support for their own contributions.

Sin #six: Meetings are always missing important information, so they postpone critical decisions.

Salvation: Get data, non just piece of furniture, into coming together rooms.

Nearly meeting rooms make it harder to have proficient meetings. They're sterile and uninviting — and often in the middle of nowhere. Why? To assistance people "concentrate" by removing them from the frenzy of office life. Just this isolation leaves meeting rooms out of the data flow. Often, the downside of isolation outweighs the benefits of focus.

Computer-services giant EDS has built a set of high-tech facilities that go out meetings participants awash 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 futurity.

The Capture Lab "is a cocky-contained data network," says Michael Bauer, a master with EDS'due south management consulting subsidiary. "Nosotros can bring in information from the Cyberspace or from EDS'due south internal Web. We can go information on stock prices, even about the weather if nosotros're worried about shipping or travel. It'south brought into the room, displayed on a screen, and talked almost."

It's non necessary to become that far. Jon Ryburg, the meeting ergonomist, offers a few ways to increase the "information quotient" in coming together spaces. For one thing, allow enough space in your meeting rooms for teams to store materials. Projection teams generate lots more than minutes and memos. Meetings build models, make full upward flip charts, create artifacts of all sorts – "information" that's vital to time to come meetings. "People are constantly hauling materials to and from meeting rooms," Ryburg says. "It's much easier to just store things for later on meetings."

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

"Knowledge workers spend 80% of their time at the part abroad from their desks," Miller says. "Where are they? Working on projects. The way to support that work is to build projection clusters and co-locate desks around them. You tin post data and never accept it downwards. Nosotros call it 'information persistence.' And we don't talk virtually meetings. Nosotros talk almost 'interactions.' It's office of the new science of effective piece of work."

Sin #7: Meetings never become amend. People make the same mistakes.

Salvation: Practice makes perfect. Monitor what works and what doesn't and concord people accountable.

Meetings are like whatsoever other part of business life: you get ameliorate only if you commit to it — and aim high. Charles Schwab & Co., the financial-services visitor based in San Francisco, has fabricated that commitment. In well-nigh every meeting at Schwab, someone serves as an "observer" and creates what the visitor calls a Plus/Delta listing. The list records what went right and what went incorrect, and gets included in the minutes. Over time, both for specific coming together groups and for the company equally a whole, these lists create an calendar for alter.

How much can meetings meliorate? The last discussion goes to Bernard DeKoven: "People don't have good meetings because they don't know what skillful meetings are like. Good meetings aren't simply nigh work. They're nigh fun — keeping people charged up. Information technology'due south more than collaboration, information technology's 'coliberation' — people freeing each other up to remember more creatively."

"Take I Died and Gone to Coming together Heaven?"

"How to Fix for Your Next Meeting"