How many times have you been to a business meeting and wondered just what it was all about or why they had bothered calling it in the first place? Unproductive and unnecessary meetings can be aggravating for everyone involved. They can also be a spectacular waste of valuable time and manhours if not approached and managed appropriately.

Most unproductive meetings fail before they start, through a lack of preparation. By making sure you prepare for the meeting and then managing the gathering, you can ensure that your meetings are much more productive.

Firstly, before calling any meeting, decide whether a meeting is appropriate at all. Meetings should really only be called if there is a defined objective. If you have no objective, then think twice about calling the meeting. Your objective could be one of many things though, like:

- making a decision

- gaining agreement

- gaining information

- reviewing progress

- building a team.

Make sure you know why you're calling the meeting and that a meeting is appropriate. Ask yourself, 'how else could I do this?' and 'what will this cost?'.

Secondly, as with most things in business, proper planning and preparation is essential.

Decide your objective in advance. What is it that you want from the meeting and the attendees?

Plan your discussion topics. What will you be talking about? How will the discussions go? What are the likely 'rabbit-holes' or off-subject distractions that will arise. What will you do if the discussion gets side-tracked?

Decide who should attend. Once you know what you're looking for you should be able to decide who should be there and what they will bring to your meeting. Try not to make it a cast of millions. Meetings with more than seven or eight people in active discussion will rarely be productive. If you need to invite more than this, try approaching the subject matter differently. Could you target smaller subject chunks allowing several smaller, more focused meetings to address the larger issue?

Book your venue. Getting the right venue can be crucial to your meeting and shouldn't be underestimated as a potential success factor. Make sure it sets the right tone, is in the right place and will allow for a comfortable meeting with all necessary utilities or resources at hand. Allow time for any attendees that may need to travel.

Set your agenda. Decide in advance what will be discussed and publish it. Keep the number of topics under control and to a minimum. Too many topics for discussion in a short time will result in a vague and indecisive meeting.

Inform the attendees. Invite the attendees and let them have the agenda as early as possible so there's no doubt what the meeting is for.

Allow time for you and your attendees to prepare. Inadequate preparation on the part of your attendees could sink your meeting just as quickly as your lack of preparation would.

Keep your meeting as short as possible. There's nothing worse than a six or eight hour marathon that leaves everyone exhausted and wondering why they bother. If you can't discuss it all in a short period, then decide whether the topics should be limited to allow for more focus. If you do need a long meeting, make sure you schedule comfort breaks so that the discussion can stop periodically to allow people to get fresh air, go the toilet, get a coffee and generally refocus themselves for the rest of the meeting.

Finally, think about laying down some ground rules at the start of the meeting. Let everyone know who the chairperson is and what their role will be. Tell everyone who will be taking the minutes and recording actions. People will then be able to ensure that this person understands what has been decided and can record appropriately.

A good meeting will stand or fall on the behaviours of the people involved. Why not outline your expectations of everyone in terms of how you would like them to behave in the meeting and why. Just making sure people are willing to be open, receptive to ideas and opinions as well as co-operative in meetings, will go a long way to ensuring that the discussions are as productive as possible.