There are good meetings and there are bad meetings. Bad meetings drone on forever, you never seem to get to the point, and you leave wondering why you were even present. Effective ones leave you energized and feeling that you've really accomplished something. So what makes a meeting effective? Effective meetings really boil down to three things: They achieve the meeting's objective. They take up a minimum amount of time. They leave participants feeling that a sensible process has been followed. If you structure your meeting planning, preparation, execution, and follow up around these three basic criteria, the result will be an effective meeting.

Selecting Participants Developing Agendas Opening the Meeting Establishing Ground Rules Time Management in Meetings Evaluating the Meeting Process Evaluating the Overall Meeting Closing the Meeting Lots of advice from a talkative MBA

This is the classic! In "How to Make Meetings Work, Michael Doyle wrote a very useful and comprehensive book on guiding people on how to plan, organize and run effective and productive meetings. The book is well written in an easy to follow and understand style. It helped me to discard the notion that meetings are a waste of time and money and learnt how they can be very useful for an organization. Among the important tips that the author highlighted are the importance of having a clear agenda distributed in advance of the meeting, having a clear purpose of the meeting, clarity on the type of meeting being held (e.g. whether it is a planning meeting, for decision making, feedback etc), adequate preparation by all participants, participation in discussions by all those present at a meeting, importance of starting and ending on time, the need to stick to the agenda, summarizing action items and resolving conflicts that may arise. The book also provides insights into meeting leadership skills.

Note the variety of resources and dimensions on this site. "According to surveys by the Wharton Center for Applied Research, managers report that only 56% of their meetings are productive - and that 25% would have been more effective as conference calls, memos, e-mails, or voicemails

Still, a recent Twitter conversation about daily habits and successful business leaders, prompted  me to ask 14 top performers in a wide variety of fields to share one thing they do, every day, they feel has contributed significantly to their success.

Today, the overriding problem for every organization is how to change, deeply and continually, and at an accelerating pace. We live in a world where change is "shaken, not stirred." Yet in most organizations, practices and structures reflexively favor the status quo over change and renewal. We see entire industries-for example, pharmaceuticals, music, advertising, and publishing-where the incumbents are struggling to invent their way out of slowly dying business models.

Metaverse Roadmap Foresight Framework Inputs were solicited in four topic areas: I. Industry Conditions, II. Forecasts, III. Issues and Questions, and IV. Problems and Indicators. These were divided into nineteen categories, from History to Progress Indicators. Each was also considered in three subcategories: A. Technology and Science, B. Business and Economics, or C. Social, Legal and Other domains.

Serendipity is for me a deeply meaningful word. The more than dozen posts discussing serendipity on my blog include how we created "enhanced serendipity" at an event I ran in 2003 in New York, more details on the story of the word serendipity and how to enhance it, the importance of the "serendipity dial" and far more.

A topic of great importance - serendipity - has suddenly surfaced in public debate. William McKeen, chairman of the University of Florida journalism department, recently wrote an article in the St Petersburg Times titled The endangered joy of serendipity, suggesting that in an online world we are less likely to stumble across the vital information you aren't specifically looking for. Steven Johnson, author of among other titles Everything Bad is Good For You, responded with a blog post Can we please kill this meme now,

Serendipity is defined as the ability to make fortunate discoveries accidentally. There's so much of modern life that makes it preferable to the vaunted good old days - better hygiene products and power steering leap to mind - but in these disposable days of now and the future, the concept of serendipity is endangered. Think about the library.

People can improve their innovation skills by mentally simulating the use of innovation tools.  Chip and Dan Heath in their book, Made to Stick, talk of the importance of mental simulation with problem solving as well as skill-building.

suggested by Ross Dawson

The rise in consumer-oriented social networking applications and platforms over recent years has drawn curiosity from enterprises both large and small. IDC believes that curiosity has turned into business opportunity as the lines between consumer and enterprise continue to blur. Unfortunately, adoption of social software in the enterprise has encountered some skepticism due to the hype surrounding the technology and the perception that it is the younger generations' means for socializing with friends. It has also been criticized as being a waste of time. Yet there is evidence to suggest that this doubt is shifting and that enterprise social software is becoming the next generation of collaboration tools to enhance organizational productivity.

A Habit of Mind is knowing how to behave intelligently when you DON'T know the answer.
Employing Habits of Mind requires drawing forth certain patterns of intellectual behavior that produce powerful results. They are a composite of many skills, attitudes and proclivities including:
Value:  Choosing to employ a pattern of intellectual behaviors rather than other, less productive patterns.
Inclination:  Feeling the tendency toward employing a pattern of intellectual behaviors.
Sensitivity:  Perceiving opportunities for, and appropriateness of employing the pattern of behavior.
Capability:  Possessing the basic skills and capacities to carry through with the behaviors.
Commitment:  Constantly striving to reflect on and improve performance of the pattern of intellectual behavior.

Jay's basic definition

Google's mag/book

Tony Schwartz. Managers at the breaking point