Naomi Chavez, an internal consultant for Cisco Systems, 1 of Silicon Valley'due south leading network-equipment manufacturers, is frustrated: "We take the most ineffective meetings of any company I've ever seen."

Kevin Eassa, vice president of operations for the disk division of Conner Peripherals, another Silicon Valley behemothic, 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 nosotros've got a long fashion to go."

Richard Collard, senior manager of network operations at Federal Express, is simply exasperated: "We just seem to come across and encounter and encounter and nosotros never seem to do anything."

Meetings are the virtually universal — and universally despised — office of business life. Just bad meetings exercise more than ruin an otherwise pleasant day. William R. Daniels, senior consultant at American Consulting & Preparation of Manufactory Valley, California, has introduced coming together-comeback techniques to companies including Applied Materials and Motorola. He is adamant virtually the real stakes: bad meetings make bad companies.

"Meetings matter because that'southward where an organization's civilization perpetuates itself," he says. "Meetings are how an arrangement says, 'Yous are a member.' So if every solar day we get to slow meetings full of boring people, then nosotros tin can't aid but think that this is a tedious company. Bad meetings are a source of negative messages about our company and ourselves."

It's not supposed to be this manner. In a business concern world that is faster, tougher, leaner, and more than downsized than ever, you might expect the sheer demands of contest (non to mention the impact of e-mail and groupware) to curb our appetite for meetings. In reality, the opposite may be true. As more work becomes teamwork, and fewer people remain to practise the work that exists, the number of meetings is probable 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 function design and "meeting ergonomics." He tells his clients that they need twice as much meeting space as they did 20 years ago. The reason? "More than and more companies are team-based companies, and in team-based companies about work gets done in meetings."

A multifariousness of tools and techniques (plus a healthy dose of common sense) tin make meetings less painful, more productive, maybe even fun. There's too an of import role for technology, although the undeniable power of computer-enabled meeting systems commonly comes with astronomical price tags. Even so, there's lots to learn from electronic "meetingware" even if yous never buy it. What follows is Fast Company's guide to the seven sins of deadly meetings and, more important, seven steps to salvation.

Sin #1: People don't take meetings seriously. They arrive late, leave early on, and spend nearly of their time doodling.

Salvation: Adopt Intel'south 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. Merely these techniques address symptoms, not the disease. Disciplined meetings are about mind-set — a shared conviction among all the participants that meetings are real piece of work. That all-likewise-frequent expression of relief — "Coming together'south over, let's get back to work" — is the mortal enemy of good meetings.

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

Is in that location a company with the right mind-set? Daniels nominates Intel, the semiconductor manufacturer famous for its managerial toughness and crisp execution. Walk into any conference room at any Intel factory or office anywhere in the world and you will encounter on the wall a poster with a series of elementary questions about the meetings that have place in that location. Exercise you lot know the purpose of this meeting? Do you have an agenda? Practise you know your role? Do you follow the rules for good minutes?

These posters are a visual reminder of just how serious Intel is virtually productive meetings. Indeed, every new employee, from the near junior production worker to the highest ranking executive, is required to take the company'south dwelling-grown course on effective meetings. For years the course was taught by CEO Andy Grove himself, who believed that skilful meetings were such an important role of Intel's culture that it was worth his time to train the troops. "We talk a lot about meeting subject field," 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 you're going to follow. These things make a huge difference."

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

Salvation: Time is coin. Rails the toll of your meetings and employ computer- enabled simultaneity to brand them more productive.

About every guru invokes the same rule: meetings should terminal no longer than 90 minutes. When's 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 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 find out how much time its members spent in meetings. When he multiplied their time by their salaries, he determined that the college was spending $iii million per yr on direction-council meetings lonely. Money talks: after Rieley'due south report came out, the college trained 40 people as facilitators to keep meetings on track. Bernard DeKoven, founder of the Institute for Better Meetings in Palo Alto, California, has gone Rieley one footstep amend. He's developed software called the Meeting Meter that allows whatsoever team or department to calculate, on a running basis, how much their meetings price. After someone inputs the names and salaries of meeting participants, the programme starts ticking. Call back of it as a national debt clock for meetings.

DeKoven emphasizes that he created the Coming together Meter as a conversation piece rather than equally a serious management tool. Information technology's a visible fashion 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 nigh the cost of bad meetings. Because bad meetings lead to fifty-fifty more meetings, and over time the costs go awe-inspiring."

Engineering can practice more than just go on meetings shorter. It tin also increase productivity — that is, help generate more ideas and decisions per infinitesimal. I of the master benefits of meetingware is that it allows participants to violate the first rule of good behavior in most other circumstances: wait your turn to speak. With Ventana's GroupSystems V, 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 grouping to see. Most 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 acme executives of 20th Century Fob Filmed Entertainment. He used a estimator system supplied past CoVision, a San Francisco consulting business firm that specializes in technology-enabled meetings. Apple PowerBooks outfitted with customized software immune participants to respond to questions, propose ideas, and vote on options — all at the aforementioned time.

"We had 170 of the brightest people in the company in ane room," Bywater reports. "The challenge was, how much information and how many ideas could we get out of them? Fifty-fifty if nosotros had divided into 15 breakout groups, we'd still have only 15 people speaking at the same time. People were amazed. If we asked a question and each person typed in 2 ideas, that'southward most 350 ideas in v minutes! That was the biggest impact of the technology – the number of ideas generated in such a short fourth dimension."

Exist warned, though: electronic meetings can be more than productive than traditional meetings, only they're not always shorter. "The good news about computer-supported meetings is that the discussions tend not to exist 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 become longer. The computer-supported environment encourages people to discuss things a trivial more thoroughly than they might otherwise."

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

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

Agendas are worth taking seriously. Intel is fanatical about them; it has developed an calendar "template" that everyone in the company uses. Much of the template is unsurprising. An Intel calendar (circulated several days earlier a coming together to let participants react to and alter it) lists the meeting'south key topics, who will lead which parts of the discussion, how long each segment will take, what the expected outcomes are, and then on.

Intel agendas also specify the coming together's decision-making mode. The visitor distinguishes among four approaches to decisions: administrative (the leader has full responsibility); consultative (the leader makes a decision after weighing group input); voting; and consensus. Beingness articulate and upwardly-front near 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 upward into a decision," says Intel'due south Michael Fors. "If yous don't have structured agendas, and people aren't sure of the conclusion path, they'll bring up side issues that are related only not directly relevant to solving the problem."

Of class, even the all-time-crafted agendas can't guard against digressions, distractions, and the other foibles of human 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, meeting leaders use a "parking lot" to maintain that focus.

"When comments come up that aren't related to the event at hand, we record them on a flip chart labeled the parking lot," says Kimberly Thomas, director of communications for pocket-size business services. Just the parking lot isn't a black hole. "We ever track the issue and the person responsible for it," she adds. "We apply this technique throughout the visitor."

Sin #4: Nothing happens once the coming together 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'south that people leave meetings with different views of what happened and what's 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 another reason companies turn to estimator engineering science.

The best style 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 nearly powerful function for technology is likewise the simplest: recording comments, outlining ideas, generating written proposals, projecting them for the entire group to see, printing them then people leave with real-time minutes. Forget groupware; just become yourself a good outlining program and oversized monitor.

"You lot're non simply having a coming together, you're creating a certificate," says Michael Schrage. " I can't emphasize plenty the importance of that stardom. It is the central departure betwixt ordinary meetings and figurer-augmented collaborations. Comments, questions, criticisms, insights should enhance the quality of the document. That should be the group'south mission."

In other words, the medium is the meeting. That'south why Bernard DeKovan prefers computers to flip charts and whiteboards. "Flip charts create behaviors conditioned by the medium," he says. "People get-go competing for room on the flip chart, the facilitator has to scratch thing out, and pretty presently y'all can't read what's on it. With a computer, you lot never run out of room for ideas, you lot tin edit indefinitely, you can generate hard copies for everyone at a moment's notice. It'southward a much richer medium."

Sin #5: People don't tell the truth. There'south plenty of chat, but non much artlessness.

Salvation: Embrace anonymity.

We all know it's truthful: Likewise often, people in meetings simply don't speak their minds. Sometimes the trouble is a leader who doesn't solicit participation. Sometimes a ascendant personality intimidates the remainder of the grouping. But 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 most powerful techniques to promote candor rely on technology, and nigh of these calculator-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 costless spoken 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 Management, is a leading expert on electronic meetings. He says Ventana added anonymity to its software to come across the needs of the U.S. military. "Admirals tin can really dampen interaction at a meeting," he notes. "But we didn't realize the touch it would have in corporate settings. Fifty-fifty with people who work together all the fourth dimension, anonymity changes the social protocols. People say things differently." CoVision, the firm that facilitated the 20th Century Fox meeting, provides a system that allows for anonymous voting and anonymous group conversations. Coming together participants enter comments onto laptops, and the comments are projected onto a screen without attribution. CoVision president Lenny Lind says the system is peculiarly powerful in meetings of loftier-ranking executives.

"People in the upper reaches of management pay so much deference to the leader, and have so much to lose, that conversations apace get measured and political," he argues. "People merely 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 leave them feeling shortchanged. In that location are likewise opportunities for manipulation. Carol Anne Ogdin of Deep Wood Technology, a teamwork consultant and coming together facilitator based in Santa Clara, California, calls anonymity a "small idea that'southward been blown out of proportion." In particular, she worries almost gamesmanship – for instance, people who build an anonymous groundswell of support for their own contributions.

Sin #half dozen: Meetings are e'er missing important information, and so they postpone critical decisions.

Salvation: Get information, not just piece of furniture, into meeting rooms.

Most meeting rooms make information technology harder to take good meetings. They're sterile and uninviting — and oftentimes in the heart of nowhere. Why? To help people "concentrate" by removing them from the frenzy of office life. Merely this isolation leaves coming together rooms out of the information menses. Often, the downside of isolation outweighs the benefits of focus.

Computer-services behemothic 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 company and its clients, may offer a glimpse of the coming together room of the future.

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

It'southward not necessary to get that far. Jon Ryburg, the meeting ergonomist, offers a few ways to increase the "data quotient" in meeting spaces. For one affair, allow plenty infinite in your meeting rooms for teams to store materials. Project teams generate lots more minutes and memos. Meetings build models, make full flip charts, create artifacts of all sorts – "information" that'southward vital to future meetings. "People are constantly hauling materials to and from meeting rooms," Ryburg says. "Information technology's much easier to merely shop things for afterwards meetings."

William Miller, director of research and business development for Steelcase, the office-article of furniture manufacturer based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, emphasizes that mobility is well-nigh more than 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 part away from their desks," Miller says. "Where are they? Working on projects. The way to support that piece of work is to build projection clusters and co-locate desks around them. You can post information and never take it down. Nosotros call it 'information persistence.' And nosotros don't talk about meetings. We talk about 'interactions.' It's part of the new scientific discipline of effective work."

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

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

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

How much tin 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 like. Skillful meetings aren't merely about work. They're almost fun — keeping people charged upwardly. It's more than collaboration, it's 'coliberation' — people freeing each other up to call back more creatively."

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

"How to Fix for Your Next Meeting"