The meeting paradox

In companies a considerable time is spent on meetings.  A lot of time and energy is spent with sitting among a lot of people without having much usable result.  Sometimes I feel that meetings are a major problem at work. This is one part of the famous M&M:

On the other hand I need meetings. This seems to be the only way to share information in a workgroup. Otherwise you have to talk with everybody and then talk again to share the information what they give to you.  You see what the problem is?  People don't talk to each other about critical, uneasy, difficult things or simple can't share information in an effective way. So there are meetings. Then people arrive on meetings unprepared, there are no clear objectives set and no memo. Participants try to involve more peoples just to spread responsibility and work. And there are those who seems to be sitting at every meeting just not to miss anything and stay informed while not contributing, and so rather dragging back the group. So what can be done?

• Try to limit the number of the meetings. But when you have meetings they should be as effective as possible.
• Invite the right people. Try to limit the number of the participants. More people - less efficiency.
• Prepare. Write an agenda, tell people to be prepared.
• Make decisions. Meetings are to draw conclusions and make decisions. A meetings performance can be measured by the number of decisions made.
• Keep to the agenda and the time. If you do that people will get more careful, to prepare, avoid idle talk, and wander away from the topic.