Dr Jeff Cornwall

Meetings. Most of us really don’t like them, and many entrepreneurs hold off using them in the day-to-day management of their business as long as they can. But at some point, your business will grow large enough where meetings become a key tool to facilitate coordination and communication between a growing staff of managers.
So how do you make your meetings productive? Opinion Research USA has just issued an “Ouch Point” study that examines what makes meetings painful to participants. The top things that make meetings painful:
27 percent — disorganized, rambling meetings
17 percent — peers who interrupt and try to dominate meetings
16 percent — cell phone interruptions
9 percent — co-workers falling asleep
8 percent — no bathroom breaks (older respondents)
6 percent — no refreshments (younger respondents)
5 percent — people arriving late or leaving early
5 percent — others checking e-mail on Blackberry
4 percent — meetings that start late and those that end without distributing a written recap
So if you are at the point of needing meetings in your business remember to be organized with a clear agenda, set some basic rules and expectations about behavior, and if you have any folks my age, for goodness sake offer frequent bathroom breaks!