Yeah I'll be at that meeting...maybe

Admittedly, it’s happened very rarely since I started working for myself, but a checklist for successful meetings in this weekend’s Globe & Mail still hit home. Toronto-based management consulting firm Kinect developed the checklist as a measure of meetings’ potential effectiveness:

People look forward to our meetings.
We stay on track.
We stay on time.
People feel free to discuss their honest opinion.
Everyone participates.
No one dominates the discussion.
We engage in innovative thinking.
We produce better-than average results.
We make decisions effectively.
We reach consensus easily.
People support the decisions made.
We leave the meeting feeling time has been well spent.

I’ve bolded those which I think are particularly important. In fact, I wouldn’t go to a meeting without at least meeting these criteria.