Waste in meetings is very common. It happens all the time, but most people do not know how to deal with it or do not know how to stop wasting time in meetings on their computer or cell phone. The best way to combat this is to have a plan and stick to it. Here are some methods for you to try:

An agenda will keep you on task and on track with meeting goals. Inagables are scheduling items that you need to do when the agenda is followed. Agile coffee break is when you have the time for questions and discussion and you can make an agenda of the action items that will be tackled during the meeting.

Learn the Strategies You Need to Make Your Meetings More Productive

If your meeting is running late, then use an agenda to tell everyone in the meeting when the next meeting will be and stick to it. This is especially helpful if your meeting is using PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint presentations are more prone to be late than any other medium, so if you are using it, then you will want to stick to the schedule unless you are having a really good idea of what is going on.

If you have a large project or a million people that need to get something done, then scheduling meetings will be difficult to do. If your meeting room is a disaster, then the project manager will find that he or she is going to waste a lot of time answering phones, emails, faxes and more. So, try to have your meeting room set up in a very clean and professional way. If you cannot afford a fancy conference call or even conference calls at your office, then find another place to hold the meeting. You are wasting time and money if you waste time with meetings you cannot attend.

Everyone has heard that action items can be listed before the meeting begins and if you are using a program like Skype, then you can add action items onto the agenda. When you create an agenda, make sure that it has a sub-agenda as well, so that people can take notes as they listen. There should be a sub-agenda for each and every item that are on the agenda and when there is not a sub-agenda, then you are wasting everyone’s time and attention. So, start planning ahead of time and keep the planning simple and keep your meetings productive and efficient.

Another great tip to help you get rid of waste is to break your agenda down into small pieces. When you create an agenda you may see all the big tasks that need to be accomplished but you may not see that there are smaller, more simple tasks that you can delegate to someone else and that you can take care of yourself later. If you have a presentation at your organization and you know that it is going to take a long time to deliver, then you might decide to use Lean Coffee as your presentation medium. Using a slide show of bullet points, you can quickly tell who needs to speak next and when. This way you don’t waste all of your time listening to what everybody is saying, rather you can keep focused on the task at hand and you will be able to get things done in a much more efficient manner.

Even if you are using a great tool like Lean, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do other things to reduce the waste in meetings. One of the biggest wastes of time occurs when people just continue to talk and aren’t getting anything done. You want to find a way to break down the larger task into smaller tasks that you can handle easily and this is exactly what is required to minimize the waste in meetings.

If you are looking for ways to help your meetings to stop wasting time and money, then try using conference calls. With conference calls, you can eliminate the need for having everybody sit in a room and communicate with one another. You can also eliminate a lot of the hassle that comes along with having to conduct meetings by talking and even putting notes on the white board.