First, it will be worthwhile to track diligently the amount of time you spend at meetings including the travel time to them ( if you don't use the commute to get things done ). Just track for one typical week in your work life. As you walk in to a meeting and sit; put the date and time on a paper and then as you are about to leave note the time. At the end of the week, tally the total time. Then under that number write down what have YOU ACHIEVED last week as RESULTS ..not just FMI or FYI. Your ROI. By the way, as you curse during meetings inside your head for being there, put a dot in front of the time stamps and keep doing that during a meeting to check at the end of the week, how frustrated you were for being at those meetings. A graphical view of your own "frustration". Do you know what happens when we are frustrated? INEFFECTIVE.

Recipe for Effective Meetings

1. Accountability for Results : For each action item have a "directly responsible individual" ( not two, only one)

2. Very Small Teams - No observers, no excused, no backups, ...just a few (enough to gather around a small round table) focused people who know what's being discussed even if they walk in late at any stage. They can hit the road running. Those who can actually deliver should be there.

Keep your "FYI" through emails to others or better use a company/project internal blog ( free one that can be created in minutes is Google Blogger which requires Google Mail accounts. If you want to be more professional, use modern cloud based, pay as you use collaborative tools like Base Camp, Asana, Trello, etc.)

3. No Power Points PLEASE - Don't engage with a lifeless slide on your computer ( to feel good) . Use the time you take to create slides (many hours) to engage directlywith the one or two people with whom you have an "issue - misunderstanding - difference of opinion". If very contentious, keep it one on one, one at a time even if it means more meetings for you.

Source of Inspiration: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-ways-steve-jobs-made-161700277.html

Eng. Arjuna Manamperi
Chair MESC
M-2062