"If we want to do something creative, outside the box, innovative and un-traditional I am doubtful that sitting in a traditional meeting room, having a traditional meeting and following a traditional meeting script is going to move us toward that vision". Jamie Billingham summarises best practices for radically improving meetings.

A lot of my work involves facilitating large meetings where groups need to collaborate to resolve difficult issues or develop future plans for working together. Over the last 12 months I have started to share 4 Golden Rules with the participants which always seem to significantly improve the results we get. Here they are!

I have been piloting a radically different approach to meetings which I am calling "Egoless Meetings" which addresses three popular unwritten rules about good meeting practices which are unfortunately totally wrong. RULE 1 is that everybody gets to speak. RULE 2 is that discussions in themselves can be useful. RULE 3 is that when you meet you must work as a team not as individuals.

I had a great chat on the good, the bad and the ugly of organizational meetings with Phil Daoust of The Guardian newspaper as part of a excellent in-depth article which appeared today in G2 (April 23) entitled "How to have a meeting". Here are the online links to it:

Good operational meetings, whether co-located or virtual, are the engine of organisational and project governance. However often their success is left totally to chance. Here are my five key tips for making them more effective:

The most widely used tool for mobile, distributed and virtual teams is still the plain old telephone conference call. However it is also the most badly used! So whether you are talking over Skype, mixing it with screen sharing and messaging, using your corporate PABX or just calling in to an external service if you follow these 12 simple rules you will get much better calls.

Operational meetings are the engine of organisational and project governance however often their success is left totally to chance. Heres my 7 tips for making them more effective

Create a single frame video conference using a peopleclock to help participants concentrate and engage better.

The UK guardian, reports that business meetings in the UK have become so boring that most participants totally mentally check out.