Make most of company meetings

Do your weekly meetings feel like a waste of time? More importantly, does your company have that kind of time to waste?

"In these tough economic times, every second of the workday is valuable," says Kimberly Douglas, author of the "The Firefly Effect: Build Teams That Capture Creativity and Catapult Results." Boring, unproductive meetings are commonplace at many companies that "simply go through the motions," she said.

"If a new initiative is being implemented or new product ideas are needed, the feeling from management is often, 'Well, let's have a meeting. At least it will seem like we are doing something,' " she said. "Unfortunately, not enough thought goes into how to conduct those meetings."

Douglas offers these common meeting pitfalls and how they can be avoided:

--What's the point? It's important to run through a pre-meeting checklist before putting it on everyone's schedule. Could the information be just as easily presented in an e-mail? What do you want to accomplish? Will reaching that goal really require a group decision?

--Where's the agenda? Having a plan in hand can ensure the quality of the meeting and make clear what needs to be done in advance.

--Conference room overcrowding. Keep the number of required attendees as small as possible. If critical members can't attend, consider postponing the meeting until they can.

--The meeting will seemingly go on forever. Those attending may start to wonder when they'll be able to get back to their long to-do lists. But if they know when a meeting will be over, they won't speculate about when they can leave.

--The meeting becomes a free-for-all. Set conversational ground rules.