Do you only invite the minimum number of people possible?

Bloating a meeting with unnecessary numbers is the #1 way that a meeting can be doomed... before it starts. Any meeting with more than 10 people is destined to have people attend but who do not participate or contribute. Aim to keep it to 6 or fewer.

A few ways to do this are to:

1. Analyse the agenda to see whether everyone has to be present for every item (it may be possible to structure the agenda so that some people can leave at half time and others can arrive)
2. Split it into two separate, smaller meetings rather than one big one
3. Determine whether one or two groups can be asked to resolve some of the topics in advance, so that only one of them needs to attend with the resolutions