A．There was no summarization or decisions made after the meeting. B．There were seldom any effective inputs from participants

Speaker One
M: That meeting I attended was just like a show on stage. There were already a roomful of people when I arrived. I was told that it was an experience-sharing with the other excellent sales managers all over the country, but I chatted with several people around and discovered none was in sales! — They said the sales managers had been so busy that the finance or HR people came instead. For the whole meeting, I felt like a fool, wasting my time. Well, I’d suggest that the organizers ensure the appropriate participants at the meeting. Otherwise they could even postpone the meeting rather than holding a meeting without critical staff members.
    Speaker Two
F: My point is that we should not have meetings for meetings’ sake. Holding meetings is a very good way to enhance the communications between different departments or project members, but aren’t we expected to learn things or make decisions after the rounds of meetings? I’m just amazed at not seeing anyone doing the minutes. A meeting is considered ’incomplete’ if no one cares about the follow-ups. I don’t think it’s that difficult to appoint either a project manager or note taker for the minutes, or maybe the organizers just don’t have such a habit. However, I believe utilizing a few minutes at the end would be very useful to review any major new projects or action items that were
generated in the meeting.
    Speaker Three
M: Actually the problem with our meetings is not silence or dominance — we’re a relatively small and flat structured company so the staffs have no difficulty in speaking out with ideas and putting forward suggestions, even criticisms. You’re likely to see heated discussion in almost every meeting —that’s good because that shows the leaders are getting everyone so much involved. It always happens that we intended with one subject or theme but ended with another, for example, if we wanted to discuss about the new project plan, people would be so active and then, we might have to close the meeting with a budget control proposal instead. I think we should make it clear why this meeting is happening, why each person is participating at a given time, and then use the agenda to amplify how the theme will be explored in each section of the meeting.
    Speaker Four
F: Well, it’s not that I hate meetings, but just that when you ask the participants to put forward their ideas about certain important things, like budgetary matters, or project plans, few would be willing to speak out. However, everyone becomes an expert when it comes to discussing the color of the new curtains, or what type of coffee to buy! I guess it might be that not everyone can fully understand those important topics, or they’re simply uninterested, or lazy. Anyway, it’s really important that each participant should be involved in actions—they should be invested in the topic of the meeting and in the follow-up. That way we could accomplish more results with the whole team pulling than with one dominant staff person trying to push everyone else up the hill.
    Speaker Five
M: I don’t think anyone likes long meetings, but that’s what happens in my company. If you see a notice which says ’a half hour meeting’, no doubt the whole morning or afternoon is in. There’s actually a lot of repetition, which I guess is a very common problem in meetings. I really think a great deal of time and energy can be wasted through simple lack of planning. The organizers should know what ends they want to achieve in a meeting before it starts and prepare for it by circulating any papers or materials beforehand, and carefully thinking about what they want to say. This may sound rather boring, but solid preparation is the key to successful meeting.