Team meetings present an excellent opportunity to connect with co-workers and flesh out important ideas. But meetings also can result in wasted time and can have a negative impact your bottom line, says Richard Heft, executive director of Ext. Marketing Inc. in Toronto.

Meetings can be expensive, especially if they include your sales force, Heft says. “You are taking people out of the game to discuss investment strategies — which has value — but your team is also not out there selling products and ideas to clients,” he says, “which has a cost.”

You can save time and money by shortening your meetings, Heft says, without reducing their productivity or inhibiting teamwork and creativity.

Here are four tips for keeping meetings short:

1. Think twice before calling a meeting
Before scheduling a meeting, ask yourself if you can use email to communicate the ideas you hope to express, says Andrew Broadhead, manager of communications at Ext. Marketing.

“People find themselves in meetings and realize it could have all been solved with an email to one person,” Broadhead says.

2. Limit attendance
It’s also important to limit the number of people who attend, Heft says. Think about which team members truly need to be involved.

The only people who should be attending the meeting are those who are working on projects specifically related to the topics being discussed, and who can contribute to the conversation. Other team members can read the meeting minutes afterwards via email.

3. Schedule shorter meetings
Many times people will schedule a meeting for an hour on their Outlook calendar with the intention of keeping the meeting to around 15 minutes, Broadhead says.

If you specifically schedule the meeting for 15 minutes, everyone will feel pressure to keep the conversation focused and moving forward.

4. Create an agenda
Send out a focused agenda before the meeting, Broadhead says, with approval of the topics from everyone invited, so that everyone is on the same page during your meeting.

A very specific agenda lets everyone understand the meeting’s objectives and how they can prepare for the discussion. Also, an agenda lets your team know that this isn’t an opportunity to talk about the news, Heft adds.

This is the first part in a two-part series on getting control of team meetings. Next: How to speed up your meetings.