In general, meetings conducted today are one of the greatest costs to businesses because of their unproductiveness. If you calculate the hourly rate of each individual sitting in a meeting, on average, with maybe six people in a one-hour meeting, with people attending from the front line to top management, it might cost about $6,000, or $100 per minute.

One of my earliest experiences as a corporate trainer was to consider a request for a proposal to facilitate a training workshop about running and being in effective meetings. One reason I can still remember these details is because it turned out that the client brought in a local newspaper reporter who subsequently reported on how to run effective meetings in the work place. The client expressed their need as urgent and urged the...