Your scenario: You are a member a small engineering firm with astaff of 8. Your team meets every Wednesday morning for a meetingto review projects and activities.Engineers provide updates onprojects and discuss problems they are having; the boss throws outnew project ideas, and everyone enjoys some social time, chattingabout hobbies and families.

Frequently, these meetings run well over an hour and don'talways get very much accomplished. What to do? Your employer, theowner of the firm, seeks you out because of your strong writingability and asks you to solve a problem. These folks are all highlypaid, and meetings that don't accomplish much are still costing thefirm a lot of money...like the equivalent of one 8 hour day a week!(over 400 expensive man and woman hours a year)!

Your task:

1. Find out how to conduct effective meetings and write up apolicy/procedure (i.e. directive) memo to the staff about howmeetings will be conducted in the firm to be efficient andcost-effective. Consider as well what communications should/couldbe handled outside the meetings or in other ways. Here's a link tohow to conduct a meeting that may be helpful! This is only one ofmany that are available to you just by searching.

2. Create a meeting agenda/minutes template for conducting andrecording minutes...be creative and use the table tools in Word,NOT a template you find!!!!! Remember, you are creating theguidelines for the meeting rules YOU are setting.

The following link might be helpful...

http://projectmanagementhacks.com/meeting-tips/