Naomi Chavez, an internal consultant for Cisco Systems, one of Silicon Valley's leading network-equipment manufacturers, is frustrated: "We have the near ineffective meetings of any visitor I've e'er 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 business firm is trying to assistance united states of america, and we think they've hit the marker. But we've got a long mode to go."

Richard Collard, senior director of network operations at Federal Limited, is but exasperated: "We but seem to meet and come across and meet and we never seem to do anything."

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

"Meetings matter because that'due south where an organization'south civilisation perpetuates itself," he says. "Meetings are how an organisation says, 'You are a member.' And then if every day nosotros go to boring meetings full of boring people, then nosotros can't assistance just think that this is a boring company. Bad meetings are a source of negative messages about our company and ourselves."

It'due south not supposed to be this way. In a business world that is faster, tougher, bacteria, and more downsized than ever, you might look the sheer demands of competition (non to mention the bear upon of eastward-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 do the work that exists, the number of meetings is probable to increase rather than subtract. Jon Ryburg, president of the Facility Functioning Grouping in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is an organizational psychologist who advises companies on function design and "coming together ergonomics." He tells his clients that they need twice every bit much coming together space as they did xx years ago. The reason? "More and more companies are team-based companies, and in team-based companies almost work gets washed in meetings."

A variety of tools and techniques (plus a healthy dose of mutual sense) tin make meetings less painful, more productive, perhaps fifty-fifty fun. There'south as well an important function for technology, although the undeniable power of computer-enabled meeting systems usually comes with astronomical price tags. Nevertheless, in that location'due south lots to acquire from electronic "meetingware" even if yous never buy it. What follows is Fast Company's guide to the seven sins of mortiferous meetings and, more important, 7 steps to salvation.

Sin #i: People don't have meetings seriously. They arrive late, get out early, and spend almost of their time doodling.

Salvation: Prefer Intel's heed-prepare that meetings are real work.

At that place are equally many techniques to improve the "crispness" of meetings as in that location are items on the typical meeting agenda. Some companies punish latecomers with a penalty fee or reprimand them in the minutes of the meeting. Only these techniques accost 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-too-frequent expression of relief — "Meeting's over, allow's go back to work" — is the mortal enemy of practiced meetings.

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

Is at that place a company with the correct heed-set? Daniels nominates Intel, the semiconductor manufacturer famous for its managerial toughness and crisp execution. Walk into any briefing room at any Intel mill or role anywhere in the world and you will see on the wall a affiche with a series of simple questions about the meetings that take place there. Practice you know the purpose of this meeting? Do yous take an agenda? Do you lot know your role? Do you follow the rules for practiced minutes?

These posters are a visual reminder of but 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 visitor's dwelling-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 part of Intel'due south culture that it was worth his time to train the troops. "We talk a lot about meeting discipline," says Michael Fors, corporate grooming director at Intel Academy. "It 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 departure."

Sin #ii: Meetings are also long. They should accomplish twice as much in half the fourth dimension.

Salvation: Fourth dimension is money. Rails the cost of your meetings and use computer- enabled simultaneity to brand them more than productive.

Almost every guru invokes the same rule: meetings should concluding no longer than 90 minutes. When'due south the terminal fourth dimension your visitor held to that rule?

One reason meetings elevate on is that people don't appreciate 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'south 130-person direction council to detect out how much time its members spent in meetings. When he multiplied their fourth dimension past their salaries, he adamant that the higher was spending $iii million per year on management-council meetings lonely. Money talks: later on Rieley's study came out, the college trained twoscore people equally facilitators to proceed meetings on rail. Bernard DeKoven, founder of the Plant for Amend Meetings in Palo Alto, California, has gone Rieley i step better. He'south developed software called the Meeting Meter that allows any squad or department to summate, on a running basis, how much their meetings cost. After someone inputs the names and salaries of meeting participants, the program starts ticking. Call back of information technology as a national debt clock for meetings.

DeKoven emphasizes that he created the Coming together Meter every bit a chat piece rather than equally a serious management tool. It's a visible way to put meeting productivity on the agenda. "When I use the meter, I don't but talk virtually the price of meetings," he says, "I talk about the cost of bad meetings. Because bad meetings lead to even more meetings, and over fourth dimension the costs become awe-inspiring."

Engineering science tin can exercise more than merely keep meetings shorter. It can besides increase productivity — that is, help generate more ideas and decisions per infinitesimal. One of the primary benefits of meetingware is that it allows participants to violate the offset rule of good behavior in most other circumstances: wait your turn to speak. With Ventana'south GroupSystems Five, 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 run across. Most everyone who has studied or participated in estimator-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 Entertainment. He used a computer system supplied by CoVision, a San Francisco consulting house that specializes in engineering 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 fourth dimension.

"Nosotros had 170 of the brightest people in the company in i room," Bywater reports. "The challenge was, how much information and how many ideas could we get out of them? Even if nosotros had divided into 15 breakout groups, we'd yet accept just 15 people speaking at the same fourth dimension. People were amazed. If we asked a question and each person typed in ii ideas, that'due south well-nigh 350 ideas in five minutes! That was the biggest impact of the technology – the number of ideas generated in such a brusk time."

Be warned, though: electronic meetings can 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 become longer. The computer-supported environment encourages people to discuss things a footling more thoroughly than they might otherwise."

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

Salvation: Get serious about agendas and store distractions in a "parking lot." Information technology'southward the starting point for all advice on productive meetings: stick to the agenda. Merely it's difficult to stick to an agenda that doesn't be, and most meetings in almost companies are incomparably agenda-free. "In the existent world," says Schrage, "agendas are nearly as rare as the white rhino. If they practice exist, they're near as useful. Who hasn't been in meetings where someone tries to prove that the agenda isn't advisable?"

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

Intel agendas also specify the meeting's decision-making way. The visitor distinguishes among iv approaches to decisions: authoritative (the leader has full responsibility); consultative (the leader makes a decision subsequently weighing grouping input); voting; and consensus. Being clear and up-forepart about decision styles, Intel believes, sets the correct expectations and helps focus the conversation.

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

Of grade, fifty-fifty the best-crafted agendas can't guard confronting digressions, distractions, and the other foibles of human interaction. The challenge is to proceed 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 upwardly that aren't related to the outcome at hand, we tape them on a flip chart labeled the parking lot," says Kimberly Thomas, director of communications for minor business services. But the parking lot isn't a blackness pigsty. "Nosotros ever track the issue and the person responsible for it," she adds. "We use this technique throughout the company."

Sin #4: Naught happens once the coming together ends. People don't convert decisions into activity.

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

The problem isn't that people are lazy or irresponsible. It's that people exit meetings with different views of what happened and what's supposed to happen side by side. Meeting experts are unanimous on this bespeak: even with the ubiquitous tools of arrangement and sharing ideas — whiteboards, flip charts, Postal service-it notes — the capacity for misunderstanding is unlimited. Which is another reason companies plow to computer technology.

The best fashion to avoid that misunderstanding is to convert from "meeting" to "doing" — where the "doing" focuses on the creation of shared documents that lead to activeness. The fact is, at most powerful function for technology is also the simplest: recording comments, outlining ideas, generating written proposals, projecting them for the entire group to see, printing them and so people go out with real-time minutes. Forget groupware; just get yourself a good outlining program and oversized monitor.

"Y'all're not just having a meeting, y'all're creating a certificate," says Michael Schrage. " I can't emphasize enough the importance of that stardom. It is the primal departure betwixt ordinary meetings and computer-augmented collaborations. Comments, questions, criticisms, insights should enhance the quality of the certificate. That should be the group'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 you tin can't read what's on information technology. With a figurer, you never run out of room for ideas, yous can edit indefinitely, y'all can generate difficult 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's plenty of conversation, but not much candor.

Salvation: Embrace 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 residuum of the group. Just near of the fourth dimension the problem is a simple lack of trust. People don't feel secure enough to say what they really retrieve.

The most powerful techniques to promote candor rely on technology, and almost of these computer-based tools focus on anonymity — enabling people to express opinions and evaluate alternatives without having to divulge their identities. Information technology's a sobering commentary on free speech in business organisation — "Say what you think, and we'll disguise your names to protect the innocent" — merely it does seem to 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 proficient on electronic meetings. He says Ventana added anonymity to its software to run into the needs of the U.S. military. "Admirals can actually dampen interaction at a coming together," he notes. "But we didn't realize the impact it would have in corporate settings. Even 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 arrangement that allows for bearding voting and bearding 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 have so much to lose, that conversations chop-chop go measured and political," he argues. "People just won't bare their souls. Anonymity changes that."

But there are bug with anonymity. Some people similar getting credit for their ideas, and anonymity can exit them feeling shortchanged. At that place are also opportunities for manipulation. Carol Anne Ogdin of Deep Woods Engineering science, a teamwork consultant and meeting facilitator based in Santa Clara, California, calls anonymity a "modest thought that's 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 #vi: Meetings are always missing of import data, so they postpone critical decisions.

Conservancy: Go data, not just article of furniture, into meeting rooms.

Most meeting rooms make it harder to have proficient meetings. They're sterile and uninviting — and often in the center of nowhere. Why? To assist people "concentrate" past removing them from the frenzy of part life. Simply this isolation leaves coming together rooms out of the information flow. Frequently, the downside of isolation outweighs the benefits of focus.

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

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

It's not necessary to go that far. Jon Ryburg, the coming together ergonomist, offers a few ways to increase the "information quotient" in coming together spaces. For 1 thing, allow enough space in your meeting rooms for teams to store materials. Project teams generate lots more than than minutes and memos. Meetings build models, fill up flip charts, create artifacts of all sorts – "information" that'southward 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 meetings."

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

"Noesis workers spend eighty% of their time at the function abroad from their desks," Miller says. "Where are they? Working on projects. The way to support that work is to build project clusters and co-locate desks around them. You lot can mail service information and never take it downward. We call it 'data persistence.' And we don't talk about meetings. We talk almost 'interactions.' It's part of the new science of effective work."

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

Salvation: Do makes perfect. Monitor what works and what doesn't and hold people accountable.

Meetings are like any other part of business life: y'all get amend only if you commit to it — and aim high. Charles Schwab & Co., the financial-services visitor based in San Francisco, has made that commitment. In virtually every coming together at Schwab, someone serves as an "observer" and creates what the company calls a Plus/Delta list. 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 every bit a whole, these lists create an agenda for modify.

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 like. Proficient meetings aren't just about work. They're nearly fun — keeping people charged up. It's more than collaboration, it's 'coliberation' — people freeing each other up to think more than creatively."

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