Don't waste my time! A guide to common sense meetings.

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein Woody Allen once said we live in a world with "too many moving parts." Health care is a prime example of this level of complexity. To meet the challenges of change, the ability of leaders to work constructively with each other is essential. This requires team effort, extracting from a variety of venues, incorporating diverse experts, and effective use of available resources. To achieve this, a well-functioning committee process is generally required. Examination of this process and noting various employable techniques is useful in order to effectively respond to the constant changes in health care and how they apply to the laboratory environment. It is a well-established fact that committee meetings can be a waste of time if not properly prepared for or perceived by committee members or others to be poorly managed. Committee participants quickly recognize this and can be less than cooperative, resulting in failing to meet the desired goals for that committee. The intent of this article is to provide some common sense activities that can contribute to managing a meeting in a productive and timely manner.