If your staff is grumbling that there are too many long meetings, switch things up. Make team huddles more productive with tips from time-management expert Gail Kasper (gailkasper.com).

Set guidelines or rules.
Sit down with your team and decide the best way to structure things. Ideas may include limiting meetings to one-hour time frames, starting and ending on time and determining the best time of day to schedule them. When you solicit everyone’s input, you’re more likely to get buy-in.

Be prepared with an agenda.
Let all attendees know at least 24 hours in advance what you’ll be covering in your meeting. This allows them to come prepared, yielding a steady flow of conversation and little room for pockets of silence and wasted time. Have someone take notes to keep track of the discussions.

Plan a course of action.
Meetings often revolve around problems or challenges that involve a lot of discussion but no resolution. Toward the end of the meeting, review the status of outstanding items and decide what action steps need to be taken to resolve them. Then follow up on these steps next week.

Celebrate successes.
Meetings can be used to set and track departmental and company goals. Be sure to focus on individual and team victories when goals are met. Sharing success stories will keep your team moving forward and encourage results—so they won’t dread coming to meetings anymore.