[jlouis]

Meetings should have an agenda. By mail. 5 days in advance. That will kill "impulse meetings". First point on the agenda: "Is this meeting necessary?". Every time. With luck, it can be adjourned in less than 5 minutes. If not, you have something to discuss.

Meetings have a secretary who writes down decisions. The referendum is available as quickly as possible. The same day or the next. Meetings have a speaker who conducts the order in which people are speaking. For each agenda-point, you have 2 rounds of discussion. After that, you must cast a vote on the point or make a decision.

Ok, that was the extreme version. But it is either that or "till the coffee cup is empty" meetings. The advantage of having some rules is that you will actually get something done in the meetings. If you can't get something decided, voted in or otherwise actionated, don't hold the meeting.

Remember: If there is 8 people in a meeting, each minute in the meeting takes 8 minutes of work. Also, there are 8*7/2 relations between these people. This leads to the conclusion that you must keep the number of people down in a meeting.

Finally: Get consistency in when meetings are held. In my former code-job I hated getting in to work in order to do some great coding, just to be shown off into a meeting. All productivity that day was totally gone afterwards. Do that 3 days a week and you have cut your productivity of your developer to 2/5. Do it for all of the 6 person staff and you lost about 2.5 persons in productivity a week.

Do I sound bitter? I probably am :)

[chrisbroadfoot]

Mail is horrible. As I just commented, I much prefer the pattern of using a wiki to organise a meeting agenda.

That way, everyone can contribute to the meeting's purpose (beforehand, obviously)

[skmurphy]

Not only beforehand: you can use the same page for the minutes as well and the "secretary" doesn't become the neck of the bottle. The page should be updated during the meeting and links added to other relevant material as needed.

[chrisbroadfoot]

No, not during the meeting. I think it's rude for people to be using devices in a meeting unless it's necessary - demo'ing, presenting, etc. Not only that, but it will make everyone else in the room uncomfortable, and the person on the device won't be paying attention or contributing much of anything.

[skmurphy]

I guess my experience has been different: we've found it very effective to have the decisions documented and reviewed before the meeting ends. This is for 3-6 folks on a small team, either face to face or on the phone/skype.