communications and feedback, you can end up with one of those situations in which the proverbial right hand doesn't know what the left

is doing.

Good intentions have a way of going awry, however. Meetings can take on a life of their own and not only drain productivity from the company but result in MIS-communication.

Nonproductive meetings have been a pet peeve of mine throughout my career. Between work and various volunteer organizations that I've belonged to, too many days of my life have been frittered away in bull sessions that accomplished little or nothing. Dozens of times I've walked away from a meeting muttering to myself about what a waste of time that was. I'm sure all of you have had the same experience.

The good news is that the need for staff meetings is diminishing, thanks to e-mail. Probably 90 percent of the information that needs to be conveyed to people you work with can be better done via e-mail rather than in face-to-face group encounters. I preside over the editorial staffs of three different trade magazines and we don't conduct more than a half-dozen staff meetings a year. Almost all of the communication we need to put out these magazines can be

done electronically.

Advantages of e-mail over meetings are plentiful:

• E-mail documents show who said what and who's responsible for certain tasks.

• You can copy as many or as few people as necessary. Persons not copied generally don't know they've been excluded, which avoids the hurt feelings and office politics that result when certain individuals get excluded from group meetings.

• E-mail is much, much quicker and encourages to-the-point brevity.

• You can send or read e-mail any time of night and day. Participants need not disrupt their work to be present at a specific time and place.

Of course, wordsmithing is our trade, so the way our magazine staffs communicate may not be applicable to everyone. There are also disadvantages to e-mail. Some people communicate better verbally than with the written word and people who are not good writers but full of good ideas may not get a fair hearing via e-mail. Moreover, e-mail misses the body language and voice inflections that are so important to communication.

So, meetings are here to stay. The goal should be to minimize them and make those that do take place as productive as possible. Here are some tips to achieve those objectives.

1. Don't be afraid to cancel regularly scheduled meetings.

Monday morning staff meetings are a hoary tradition in the business world. They're aimed at making plans for the coming week and reviewing progress made the previous week. Construction firms in particular find these sessions helpful to track project schedules.

Sometimes they are. But the problem with regularly scheduled meetings is the meetings become ends unto themselves rather than a means to an end. Participants get in the habit of meeting because they're supposed to have a meeting, whether or not there is anything important to be discussed. If you feel time could be better spent elsewhere, don't hesitate to cancel a meeting.

2. All meetings need a written agenda.

A meeting without an agenda is a bull session. Sometimes great ideas come out of bull sessions. But B.S. can take place during lunch breaks, over cocktails, on the golf course or in fishing boats, or wherever else colleagues may gather on their own time. B.S. has no place during business hours. If you are going to occupy the time of people on your payroll while the meter is running, it needs to be for the purpose of discussing specific business issues. That requires a meeting, not a bull session.

And a meeting requires an agenda. It should outline the topics for discussion at the meeting-the more specific the better. You cannot address "business problems" in a one-hour meeting. There's only enough time to address one or two specific problems. So the agenda would be better to reference "collections," or "tardiness," or "inspections," or some other issue that you might actually be able to get a handle on in a brief period of time.

3. Put a time limit on every meeting.

Agendas should have time limits assigned to each item on the agenda, and the meeting itself should have a time limit. This would vary, of course, with the scope of the meeting, but you're kidding yourself if you think you'll resolve three times as many issues in a three-hour meeting as you would in a one-hour session. People wear out. Discussions take irrelevant directions. Bathroom breaks become necessary. Keep meetings as short as possible.

4. Dictators run the best meetings.

A tight agenda and time limits are useless without a dictator to enforce them. Whoever presides over a meeting must be ruthless in keeping to the agenda and to the time limits. This person ought to verge on rudeness in cutting off speakers who ramble and make sure everyone keeps to the topic at hand.

If nobody volunteers, the meeting leader needs to assign specific tasks to specific individuals, along with deadlines for completion. If a discussion topic runs past its time limit, the meeting chairperson needs to decide whether to cut off discussion, or continue it and table something else on the agenda for a later time.

Without a dictator presiding, meetings always degenerate into bull sessions. Always.

5. Productive meetings require defined objectives.

What is the purpose of any given meeting and what is the expected outcome? If you can't give a pointed answer to these questions, don't bother holding a meeting.

A single objective is best. Some good reasons to hold a meeting include:

• To inform large numbers of people of something they all have a stake in.

• To brainstorm or discuss a proposal.

• To organize a project and assign responsibilities.

• To train.

• To dispel a rumor or break some news, good or bad.

6. Someone needs to take notes and disseminate them.

Without a written record the same issues tend to get debated in meeting after meeting without resolution. That's when people say, "Didn't we cover that already?" while everyone scratches their heads in vague recollection. Moreover, everyone has selective memory. We tend to remember discussions that went to our liking, while forgetting those that didn't. Also, notes assure that specific individuals are held accountable for tasks assigned.

I use the word "notes" rather than "minutes" because most minutes are couched in innocuous language that details what was discussed but not the disposition. They'll say something like, "We discussed the issue of collections," without saying that the CFO was given a week to get money from the worst deadbeats or else initiate legal action.

Notes should summarize the meeting in as much detail as the recorder can keep track of. Copies should be sent to all meeting participants, with names listed so everyone has a record of who was present-along with the time and date of the meeting. The recorder should invite anyone who disputes a point in the notes to take it up with the recorder within a reasonable deadline. If someone disputes the notes, revised notes may be necessary-again, disseminated to all participants. If nobody objects, then the notes stand as an accurate record of that meeting.

Does this sound like a lot of trouble to go through? It is. If the meeting isn't important enough to go through all this rigmarole, odds are the meeting is unnecessary.

7. Calculate the cost of a meeting.

Break down the hourly pay of each participant-estimate if you don't have precise knowledge. Add the total and multiply by the hours or fraction thereof taken up by the meeting.

You'll find that most staff meetings cost more than $1,000 when you factor in the value of peoples' time. Ask yourself whether the results of that meeting were worth the cost.

Would you be willing to pay $1,000 to support a bull session? Few of you would answer yes. But I bet many of you have done it without knowing by eating up valuable staff time with unproductive meetings.

Before you call everyone together, first consider whether there is a better way to discuss or disseminate the information. Ask yourself how much time could be saved using alternatives, such as individual conferences, phone calls or e-mail. Don't spend your hard-earned money on bull sessions.