How many of you reading this article has suffered through very dull, inefficient, and unwarranted business meetings that wasted your valuable time? And how many of you wished it was possible to transform the wasted time into time well spent? If you answered YES, please pay attention to the dozen tips I am sharing with you on how to transform time wasted into time well spent in your business meetings.

1. Do an honest evaluation of your current business meetings, identify what is not working and commit to preparing a plan to improve the meetings which will be respectful of everyone’s time.

2. Establish ground rules for your meetings and commit to enforcing the rules.

3. Always prepare an agenda and send it to attendees prior to the meeting.

4. Establish a committed time to begin and end meetings.

5. Develop alternative times, locations and formats of your meetings to introduce a needed change from time to time.

6. Hold the person chairing the meeting accountable for keeping the meeting “on track” and enforcing the ground rules.

7. Allow some time for “brainstorming” to take advantage of creative thinking and problem solving, as appropriate.

8. Maintain a positive tone for your meetings.

9. Assign someone to record an accurate account of the meeting, including decisions, future actions, assignments, etc.

10. Set aside time to recognize excellent performance and to celebrate success.

11. Have the chairperson recap the key points of the meeting.

12. Conclude the meeting on time with a unifying statement and a summary of action items.