How to make meetings short and effective?
There are many books and articles have been written to answer this question. It is possible to find many interesting ways and techniques like prepare agenda, hand-outs, limit meeting time, meeting leader etc.
However recently I have discovered one more trick to make meetings short and effective. The best part of it is no requirements on either any special knowledge nor expensive equipment.
So the solution is very simple – conduct stand-up meetings! 🙂
Normally standing people want to sit after a short period of time. However it won’t be possible until meeting is done. As result there should not be any talks on unrelated topics because after a few minutes everyone wants to sit.
So attendees will speak on subject strictly as well as make decisions faster. Which means meeting is going to be short (topic related discussions only) and effective (decision is required to stop the meeting).
Additional ‘side effect’ is that teams could have such meetings more often without much loss of productive time.
The only disadvantage is that it might not be easy to make some attendees to stand…