10 Tactics to Keep Your Meeting on Track

When I used to be an Assistant Liaison Engineer (project manage) for PennDOT back in the 90's I used to really plan project meetings with many of our stakeholders. I learned firsthand quickly if one doesn't make a schedule and keep things on track that meeting will go on forever, and not address what you need them to. :)

One last thing I just remembered, besides everything mentioned in the article, the most important thing is to have one person in charge of the meeting who will keep it on track and be able to "tell people when they are causing distractions to the meeting". I can't think of how many times I had to stand up and ask/order people to stop having sidebar conversations about other topics that was causing a distraction. I remember attending other meeting I wasn't in charge of where the person IC just couldn't keep control effectively.

So much of it is common sense and discipline: Have an identified target, stay on target and stay on time are recurring issues with our past meetings. These happen to be a Fish & Game Association monthly membership meeting.