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

Kevin Eassa, vice president of operations for the deejay division of Conner Peripherals, another Silicon Valley giant, is realistically resigned: "We realize our meetings are unproductive. A consulting firm is trying to help us, and we recollect they've hit the mark. Merely we've got a long way to go."

Richard Collard, senior manager of network operations at Federal Limited, is simply exasperated: "Nosotros just seem to run across and see and meet and nosotros never seem to practise anything."

Meetings are the most universal — and universally despised — part of business life. Only bad meetings do more than ruin an otherwise pleasant 24-hour interval. 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 adamant about the real stakes: bad meetings make bad companies.

"Meetings thing because that's where an organisation's civilisation perpetuates itself," he says. "Meetings are how an organization says, 'You are a fellow member.' So if every 24-hour interval we go to wearisome meetings full of boring people, and then we tin can't assistance only call up that this is a wearisome visitor. Bad meetings are a source of negative messages almost 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 ever, you might expect the sheer demands of competition (not to mention the touch of e-postal service and groupware) to adjourn our appetite for meetings. In reality, the opposite may be truthful. As more work becomes teamwork, and fewer people remain to do the work that exists, the number of meetings is likely to increment rather than subtract. Jon Ryburg, president of the Facility Performance Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is an organizational psychologist who advises companies on function pattern and "meeting ergonomics." He tells his clients that they need twice as much coming together infinite as they did twenty years ago. The reason? "More than and more companies are squad-based companies, and in team-based companies near piece of work gets washed in meetings."

A diversity of tools and techniques (plus a healthy dose of common sense) tin can make meetings less painful, more productive, mayhap even fun. At that place'southward too an important role for engineering science, although the undeniable power of computer-enabled meeting systems usually comes with astronomical price tags. Still, in that location'south lots to learn from electronic "meetingware" even if you never buy it. What follows is Fast Company's guide to the seven sins of deadly meetings and, more important, 7 steps to salvation.

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

Salvation: Adopt Intel'due south mind-set that meetings are real work.

There are equally many techniques to improve 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. But these techniques address symptoms, not the disease. Disciplined meetings are almost mind-gear up — a shared confidence amongst all the participants that meetings are real work. That all-likewise-frequent expression of relief — "Meeting's over, permit'due south get back to piece of work" — is the mortal enemy of expert meetings.

"Most people but don't view going to meetings equally doing piece of work," says William Daniels. "You take to make your meetings uptime rather than reanimation."

Is there a company with the right listen-set? Daniels nominates Intel, the semiconductor manufacturer famous for its managerial toughness and crisp execution. Walk into any conference room at whatsoever Intel factory or office anywhere in the world and you will come across on the wall a poster with a serial of simple questions near the meetings that take place there. Exercise you know the purpose of this meeting? Exercise y'all take an agenda? Do you know your role? Do you follow the rules for skilful minutes?

These posters are a visual reminder of just how serious Intel is most productive meetings. Indeed, every new employee, from the most junior product worker to the highest ranking executive, is required to take the company's home-grown course on constructive meetings. For years the course was taught by CEO Andy Grove himself, who believed that good meetings were such an important part of Intel's civilization that it was worth his time to train the troops. "We talk a lot about meeting discipline," says Michael Fors, corporate training manager at Intel University. "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 besides long. They should accomplish twice as much in half the time.

Conservancy: Time is money. Rail the cost of your meetings and apply reckoner- enabled simultaneity to make them more productive.

Almost every guru invokes the aforementioned rule: meetings should last no longer than 90 minutes. When'due south 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 Eye for Continuous Quality Comeback at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, recently decided to alter all that. He did a survey of the college's 130-person management quango to notice out how much fourth dimension its members spent in meetings. When he multiplied their time by their salaries, he determined that the college was spending $3 million per yr on management-council meetings alone. Money talks: after Rieley's study came out, the college trained 40 people every bit facilitators to go on meetings on rail. Bernard DeKoven, founder of the Institute for Better Meetings in Palo Alto, California, has gone Rieley one stride better. He'south developed software chosen the Meeting Meter that allows whatever 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 program starts ticking. Think of it equally a national debt clock for meetings.

DeKoven emphasizes that he created the Meeting Meter as a conversation slice rather than as a serious management tool. It's a visible way to put meeting 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 toll of bad meetings. Considering bad meetings lead to even more meetings, and over time the costs become awe-inspiring."

Engineering can do more than just proceed meetings shorter. It can also increase productivity — that is, aid generate more ideas and decisions per minute. One of the main benefits of meetingware is that it allows participants to violate the commencement rule of skillful behavior in virtually other circumstances: wait your plow to speak. With Ventana's GroupSystems V, the most powerful coming together 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 see. Virtually everyone who has studied or participated in computer-enabled meetings agrees that this chapters 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 technology-enabled meetings. Apple PowerBooks outfitted with customized software allowed participants to respond to questions, suggest ideas, and vote on options — all at the same time.

"We had 170 of the brightest people in the company in 1 room," Bywater reports. "The challenge was, how much data and how many ideas could we get out of them? Fifty-fifty if we had divided into 15 breakout groups, we'd however take only 15 people speaking at the same fourth dimension. People were amazed. If we asked a question and each person typed in two ideas, that'southward almost 350 ideas in v minutes! That was the biggest impact of the applied science – the number of ideas generated in such a brusk fourth dimension."

Exist warned, though: electronic meetings tin be more productive than traditional meetings, but they're not always shorter. "The good news most figurer-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 get longer. The calculator-supported environs encourages people to hash out things a piffling more thoroughly than they might otherwise."

Sin #3: People wander off the topic. Participants spend more time digressing than discussing.

Salvation: Get serious well-nigh agendas and shop distractions in a "parking lot." It's the starting point for all advice on productive meetings: stick to the agenda. But information technology's difficult to stick to an agenda that doesn't exist, and near meetings in well-nigh companies are decidedly agenda-free. "In the real world," says Schrage, "agendas are about as rare equally the white rhino. If they do exist, they're well-nigh as useful. Who hasn't been in meetings where someone tries to testify that the agenda isn't appropriate?"

Agendas are worth taking seriously. Intel is fanatical most 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 coming together to let participants react to and alter information technology) lists the meeting's central topics, who will pb 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'due south decision-making style. The visitor distinguishes among four approaches to decisions: authoritative (the leader has total responsibility); consultative (the leader makes a decision after weighing group input); voting; and consensus. Being clear and upwards-front almost decision styles, Intel believes, sets the right expectations and helps focus the chat.

"Going into the meeting, people know how they're giving input and how that input will get rolled up into a decision," says Intel'due south Michael Fors. "If y'all don't take structured agendas, and people aren't certain of the decision path, they'll bring up side issues that are related simply not directly relevant to solving the problem."

Of form, even the best-crafted agendas can't guard against digressions, distractions, and the other foibles of homo interaction. The challenge is to keep meetings focused without stifling creativity or insulting participants who stray. At Ameritech, the regional telephone visitor based in Chicago, coming together leaders utilise a "parking lot" to maintain that focus.

"When comments come up that aren't related to the issue at manus, we record them on a flip nautical chart labeled the parking lot," says Kimberly Thomas, managing director of communications for small business services. But the parking lot isn't a black pigsty. "We always rail the effect and the person responsible for it," she adds. "Nosotros use this technique throughout the company."

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

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

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

The best way to avert that misunderstanding is to convert from "meeting" to "doing" — where the "doing" focuses on the creation of shared documents that atomic number 82 to action. The fact is, at most powerful role for technology is likewise the simplest: recording comments, outlining ideas, generating written proposals, projecting them for the entire group to meet, printing them so people leave with existent-time minutes. Forget groupware; just get yourself a good outlining program and oversized monitor.

"You're not merely having a meeting, you're creating a certificate," says Michael Schrage. " I tin't emphasize enough the importance of that stardom. It is the cardinal difference between ordinary meetings and estimator-augmented collaborations. Comments, questions, criticisms, insights should heighten the quality of the certificate. That should be the grouping's mission."

In other words, the medium is the meeting. That's why Bernard DeKovan prefers computers to flip charts and whiteboards. "Flip charts create behaviors conditioned past the medium," he says. "People start competing for room on the flip chart, the facilitator has to scratch thing out, and pretty soon yous can't read what's on information technology. With a reckoner, you never run out of room for ideas, you can edit indefinitely, you can generate hard copies for everyone at a moment's notice. It's a much richer medium."

Sin #5: People don't tell the truth. There's plenty of chat, but not much candor.

Salvation: Comprehend anonymity.

We all know information technology's true: Too oft, people in meetings just don't speak their minds. Sometimes the problem is a leader who doesn't solicit participation. Sometimes a dominant personality intimidates the rest of the group. Simply most of the time the problem is a simple lack of trust. People don't feel secure enough to say what they really think.

The almost powerful techniques to promote candor rely on technology, and near of these computer-based tools focus on anonymity — enabling people to limited opinions and evaluate alternatives without having to divulge their identities. Information technology's a sobering commentary on free voice communication in business — "Say what you think, 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 Direction, is a leading expert on electronic meetings. He says Ventana added anonymity to its software to meet the needs of the U.S. armed services. "Admirals can really dampen interaction at a meeting," he notes. "But we didn't realize the bear on it 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 Fox coming together, 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 so much deference to the leader, and have and so much to lose, that conversations apace go measured and political," he argues. "People just won't bare their souls. Anonymity changes that."

But in that location are problems with anonymity. Some people like getting credit for their ideas, and anonymity can leave them feeling shortchanged. At that place are also opportunities for manipulation. Carol Anne Ogdin of Deep Woods Technology, a teamwork consultant and meeting facilitator based in Santa Clara, California, calls anonymity a "small-scale thought that'southward been blown out of proportion." In particular, she worries about gamesmanship – for instance, people who build an anonymous groundswell of support for their own contributions.

Sin #half dozen: Meetings are ever missing of import information, so they postpone critical decisions.

Conservancy: Get data, non just piece of furniture, into meeting rooms.

Most meeting rooms make information technology harder to have skilful meetings. They're sterile and uninviting — and often in the middle of nowhere. Why? To help people "concentrate" by removing them from the frenzy of role life. But this isolation leaves meeting rooms out of the information menstruation. Often, the downside of isolation outweighs the benefits of focus.

Computer-services giant EDS has built a set of high-tech facilities that leave meetings participants awash in data. These much-heralded Capture Labs, electronic meeting rooms used by the visitor and its clients, may offer a glimpse of the meeting room of the future.

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

It's not necessary to go that far. Jon Ryburg, the meeting ergonomist, offers a few ways to increment the "information caliber" in meeting spaces. For one affair, permit plenty space in your meeting rooms for teams to store materials. Project teams generate lots more minutes and memos. Meetings build models, fill upward flip charts, create artifacts of all sorts – "information" that'due south vital to future meetings. "People are constantly hauling materials to and from meeting rooms," Ryburg says. "It's much easier to simply store things for later meetings."

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

"Cognition workers spend 80% of their time at the office away 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. Yous can post information and never take information technology down. We phone call it 'data persistence.' And nosotros don't talk about meetings. We talk about 'interactions.' It'due south part of the new science of effective work."

Sin #7: Meetings never get better. People make the same mistakes.

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

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

How much tin can meetings improve? The last word goes to Bernard DeKoven: "People don't have skillful meetings because they don't know what good meetings are like. Proficient meetings aren't simply virtually piece of work. They're about fun — keeping people charged up. It's more than collaboration, it's 'coliberation' — people freeing each other upward to remember more creatively."

"Accept I Died and Gone to Meeting Heaven?"

"How to Ready for Your Next Meeting"