Seth Godin gets serious about solving our meeting problems:
"1 Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?
2 Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of realtime face time.
3 Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don't, kick them out.
4 Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious.
5 If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.
6 Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.
7 The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.
8 Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.
9 If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later."
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