The most important thing a meeting can have is an agenda - what will be discussed and by whom. The second thing is a clock. Almost nothing productive ever happe

The most important thing a meeting can have is an agenda - what will be discussed and by whom. The second thing is a clock. Almost nothing productive ever happens in the second hour of a meeting (unless a long meeting was planned because of the complexity of the issues). If mission creep expands the needs, schedule a new meeting to discuss the added items. The third is a leader - not to control the content, but to ensure that the participants stick to whatever the subject of the meeting. Once they start telling war stories about their prior employer and why the left, someone needs to gently move things along. In the military, they often do stand ups - where the meeting takes place standing up so that no one gets too comfortable or goes on too long. Finally, I worked in one office that would put out Playdough and Legos for meetings so that people would have things stimulating their hands while they were listening and talking. This was fun.