Staff meetings are supposed to be a time for your team to regroup and plan for the week ahead. However, these well-intended gatherings can easily turn into a colossal waste of time due to poor planning. It is beyond frustrating to leave a meeting feeling like nothing has been accomplished. If your weekly meetings are starting to feel incredibly ineffective, it’s time to make a change.

5 Ways to Make Your Meetings More Efficient

Want to spend less time on your weekly meeting? Use these five tips to make them more effective:

1. Create an Agenda

It is easy to go off track when no one actually knows what the meeting is about. Make an agenda before each meeting and send it to each person on the invite list, so everyone knows what to expect going into the meeting. If a conversation starts going in another direction, quickly route it back to the topic at hand.

2. Carefully Choose Attendees

Take a close look at the invitee list for your weekly meetings. Does everyone really need to be there? Remove anyone who does not actually need to attend. Quite often, the larger the meeting, the more time it takes to wrap up. If you invite less people, you can avoid some of the back and forth that might otherwise take place, and possibly cut down the agenda.

3. Do Not Start Late

There is at least one person in every group who is always late to meetings. Holding the meeting until they arrive makes it acceptable for them to continue being tardy. Stop allowing latecomers to waste everyone’s time by enforcing punctually, regardless of how many people are running late. The earlier you start, the sooner everyone can get back to work.

4. Cut Meeting Time in Half

Force your meeting to go faster by making it shorter. It is easy to take your time giving updates and sharing stories when you know you still have a lot of time left in the meeting. Stay on topic by making the meeting shorter. It will force you to keep things moving.

5. Stay on Your Toes, Literally

It is easy to get comfortable and want to stay awhile when sitting in plush conference room chairs. Take this element out of the equation by removing the chairs and holding a standing-only meeting. People are much less likely to ramble on and go off topic when they have to do so on their feet.

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