Meetings should not be damp squids. They should be giving more inertia and thrust to a particular business objective. Rather than being a formal you-talk-I-talk enterprise, it should yield measurable results. Results in the form of directions, strategy, role-plays, insights, and so on. Regular meetings help a business. It helps to keep employers and employees on their toes. Meetings will make people work faster and smarter. Yet, there should not be an overkill of meetings. Then there will be more meetings and less work.

That’s specifically the reason why meetings should be concise, and productive. Some meetings are productive if the availability of certain people is there. Otherwise these meetings are not productive. To make sure that the required people are present at the meeting, letting them know in advance should solve the problem. Intimation a week or so before a meeting should suffice, followed by a reminder mail.

Give your meetings some character by planning an agenda. An agenda-less meeting is better at parties. You bet even parties have agendas though! All meetings should compulsorily have agenda. You might want to experiment with designing an agenda for your meeting. The agenda should reflect the topics that are going to be discussed, the outcome, the action, and the result-review date. You can make any agenda that suits your business.

If you are planning the meeting on your own, try to get some important people to make the planning. Important people will know what will be important for the meeting, and what will not be. You can email them the agenda for a meeting, and ask them their views on it. If they are ok with it, then go ahead and fix the agenda and time-slots for the meeting.

When your meeting concludes, have a small informal discussion session. Follow this up with an email summarizing the outcome of the meeting. By doing this you can get more professionalism into meetings, and make others realize this as well.