Great post over at Signal vs. Noise about making meetings useful. Especially in small businesses (where you don’t have the luxury of lots of employees, middle managers, etc, etc) making meetings useful is critical. Otherwise they become an increadible time waster and reduce productivity significantly.
That said, I’ve worked in plenty of big businesses that should take this same advice. Imagine how much would get done if some of the Fortune 500 spent less time in meetings and more time actually doing things.