Meetings

Today I had a meeting that started from 9.30am and ended at 5.30pm. I have always felt that meetings should not be more than 2-3 hours. Meetings that last more than that are usually 50% percent effective. This is my opinion. Others might not agree.
How many of us have always feel that meetings are always dragging. Most of the time we felt that we should not be there in the first place. Of all the items in the meeting, there is only one item that effected us and we had to wait for one or two hours just to participate in the meeting. And the item was discussed for 15 minutes.
Management nowadays love meetings. If you call to an office, most of the times the top executives are always in a meeting. Are meetings running our companies or government offices nowadays? Cant we have short discussions instead? Or meetings where everyone is standing so that items can be discussed faster and resolutions or solutions are being thought out or discussed before the meetings. Meetings are to discussed outcomes, solutions and actions to be done. They should be fast and to the points. They should not be brainstorming sessions. Brainstorming sessions should be in small groups. While meetings can be in bigger groups but they should be result oriented. If a solution takes too long to be agreed upon, form a team to have a separate discussion on the item and ask the team to prepare a paper and distribute the notes of the discussion and the options to the other members of the meeting quorum. Next meeting have a vote to decide the action to be taken.
Most of us have a lot of things to do and meetings sometimes make our work more stressful due to the time they take.

That is my two cents worth for today.