If we take a hypothetical Monday morning meeting with 10 executives from 07:30 until 10:30, that meeting may have cost your company as much as $20,000 in salaries for those people attending. This represents an annual expenditure in excess of one million dollars and only covers one meeting a week!If you were to add to this, a similar calculation for all the meetings your company holds the results are likely to be staggering.On the other hand, it is perhaps a good thing that we spend so long at meetings. If executives spend 60 % of their time attending meetings and all meetings were cancelled, 60% of business people would, very quickly, find themselves out of work. This would add a terrible burden to the already overcrowded golf courses.Meetings are not, in themselves, bad. A well managed meeting that starts and finishes on time; is well attended by the appropriately prepared people and achieves its objectives; is an important tool for any manager. So, some meetings are good, but most meetings are not.Throughout this book we will look at the preparation that precedes a good meeting, how the agenda should be used and how to structure the meeting to achieve the objectives, in the shortest possible time. We will also look at how to manage difficult people in meetings, how to use your meetings to motivate your team and how to use the law regarding formal meetings to your advantage.Whether you attend or lead meetings, this book will help you make the most or your meeting time.