Meeting Efficiency
Cognitive 
advantage
Facts and figures
The dual nature of meetings 
General issues
Focused Meetings - Sound decisions - Efficient Company
Preparation
Facilitation
Documentation
'Sorry, can I call you back? I'm in a meeting!'
'I'm important.
I'm in a meeting.
The others need to do the work.
I  have to make decisions.'
Beloved and hated
at the same time
'Good morning, boss.
How was your meeting 
yesterday?'

'It was a nightmare!
I hate wasting 
my time in meetings.'
The practical alternative to work
Meetings
Source: Study of Proudfood Consulting, London 2005
Executives were asked:
'What percentage of meetings do you feel are unnecessary?'
The average response was 28 per cent.
Source: Survey of OfficeTeam, 2009
Globally 37% of working time is wasted.
Every employee spends 84 days of the year on unproductive work.
Meetings have been identified as the main productivity killer.
This costs an estimated €219 billion each year (for Germany only)
Missing agenda
No minutes
The wrong participants
Getting side-tracked
Unsuitable approach / 
inappropriate meeting format
Nearly 50% of meetings start without an agenda.
Participants get carried away and lose sight of the overall goals
of the meeting.

It is often unclear why participants have been chosen. This can lead to  a waste of time for experts whose time could be better used elsewhere.
The meeting format depends very much on the experience of the convening party or the approach of an external consultant. 

Confirmed best practices are rarely used.
63% of meetings conclude without minutes
Minutes need to be translated in sequential text. This can open up room for manipulation and misinter-pretation of what has been discussed and agreed.  The reasoning process behind decisions remains hidden.
Colleagues or management remain uninformed about the outcome of the meeting - creating an accountability gap due to follow-up agreements and to-do lists not being communicated. The opportunity to learn from past mistakes is missed, too.
Downsides of text-based minutes
Library of
approved meeting-
architectures
Approved tools
to support thinking
and reasoning
Qualitatively 
improved reasoning processes and 
decision-making
encouraging firm thinking and creativity
Communication
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CALCULATION EXAMPLE
ME solution
The agenda depends on the selection
of the best fitting meeting-architecture
and is generated almost automatically.
ME solution
Capturing thoughts and comments shows progress.
Divagation will be transperent quickly.
The goals of the meeting can always and easily be shown to
guide participants back to the core of the discussion.
ME solution
The description of the rationals for the selection of participants is an integrated step during the preparation of a meeting.
ME solution
After a meeting a click on a button will automatically generate a visual report, reflecting the reasoning/meeting structure and its content.
ME solution
Tested, approved and standardised Meeting-Architectures do support the most common types of meetings in large organizations.
http://www.meeting-efficiency.com
http://www.parmenides-foundation.org/application/parmenides-me8482/business-case/
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There are two major kinds of work in organisations:
1. Taking phone messages for people who are in meetings, and...
2. Going to meetings.
Joyful 
usability
Process
Focused Meeting Facilitation 
Convincing Meeting Results
Optimal
Inherent risks
not talking about the same
wrong or bad decision
loss of agreements and to-do's
missing meeting targets
waste of time
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