Wasting time in pointless meetings....It's the bane of work life-and the one thing that never seems to change. But meetings can be highly effective, says Martin Murphy, who has helped a Who's Who of corporate clients transform timesapping meetings into breakthrough sessions that are truly productive.

His strategy is not simply to speed them up or make them more palatable with flashier facilitation. Rather, the key is to upend the entire concept of meetings. That means throwing out traditional protocols and using one of four new collaboration models to get more done, faster than ever before. These sessions address:

Issues management: identify, rank, and resolve issues-promoting critical concerns to Action Plan status * Problem solving: thirty-minute sessions for solving complex problems * Innovation: discover the billion-dollar idea that lurks in every organization * Strategic planning: stripped-down protocols for the kind of ongoing, realtime planning required in today's fast-paced economy

In an era when innovation and speed-to-market rule, No More Pointless Meetings leverages the creativity and knowledge of an organization's people-a potent resource that conventional meetings ignore.