Work should be fun.

And it’s no fun to feel dread whenever a meeting appears on your calendar.

As you’ve likely experienced, meetings can easily become a haunting abyss of lost time, productivity, and frankly – sanity.

From my experience, there are three elements that help ensure some level of productivity is accomplished in a meetings. (Be cautioned: the extent to which you follow these guidelines will determine the quality of the outcome.)

• Meeting Objectives
• Your meeting should have an objective. If a meeting is called without an objective I strongly urge you to ask whoever organized it to provide an objective. If an objective is not established, even after asking for one, don’t attend if possible. Your time is precious you most guard it. If you are considering calling a meeting write out the objective before hand and really consider if a meeting is actually necessary to accomplish your need. Meetings are great for discussions and presentations, if you don’t need a discussion you might not need a meeting and a written summary might suffice.
• Designated A Person To Lead The Meeting
• The person who calls the meeting leads, or at minimum plays a role in, setting the groundwork and agenda for the meeting. During the meeting, this person is responsible for ensuring the agenda is followed, there is a designated note taker, all un-topical information is tabled (and noted by the note taker) the meeting accomplishes it’s objective, and all of this is done within the time frame established.
• Leave With Assigned Action Items
• You could have an incredibly effective meeting, held to the agenda and time frame, but it ends without action items and nothing changes, it very well could be a waste of time.

Go forth and avoid the unproductive.