xii brilliant meetings Welcome to Brilliant Meetings ou've probably picked up this book because you are con- tinually frustrated by bad meeting experiences, and you want to begin a process for positive change. Like you, so many people ­ meeting participants irrespective of job level, culture or size of organisation ­ have low expectations of meet- ings simply because of repeated exposure to bad meetings. If statistics were needed to prove how we feel about ineffective meetings, then research carried out in September 2008 on behalf of VisitBritain revealed that: `Three in ten meetings are a waste of time, costing UK businesses a staggering £27.5 billion a year in wasted workforce hours'. `The average working person spends eight working weeks per year in meetings ­ almost double a typical holiday allowance ­ and 29 per cent of these meetings were considered unproductive.' 1 Y What is a meeting? It is a gathering of individuals collaborating with the interests of the organisation at its core, for a scheduled amount of time. 1 This research, commissioned on behalf of VisitBritain, was carried out by Opinium Research LLP on an online poll of 2,226 British adults between 29 August and 2 September 2008.