Time spent in the meeting room
How much time have you wasted in meeting rooms? Were you there to solve problems or just be part of the play? Make every minute in the room count, or bring the war elsewhere.
Meeting rooms need protocols to function properly, and protocols change along with time, topics, and participants. In many meetings, people spent a significant portion of time on protocols instead of addressing the issues.
A meeting is akin to a theater play. It needs a topic, roles, relationships (also hierarchies and tensions) among characters, and a meticulously written script to succeed.
Everybody in the room plays along.
Here comes the question: why do we call meetings? To communicate, to command, or to perform?
There are different kinds of meetings. Some are meant for communication, some for commanding or performance. However, no matter what they are for, meetings should head for conclusions, decisions, actions, and preferably closed deals.
Do your meetings meet the objectives?
If not, the easiest workaround is bringing discussions out of the meeting rooms. Let the meeting room be the theater and the corridor or caféteria be the war room.
Just be sure to deliver an impressive performance in the meeting room and earn the good curtain call you deserve.