Advantages:
- Briefer meetings will allow for more focused consideration of agenda items; if more time is needed, additional meetings with specific agendas can be set.
- Meetings that end ten minutes prior to the hour (or half hour) will allow for transit time and comfort breaks between meetings.
- Shorter meetings will help develop a culture of prompt arrival, engaged participation, and documented decision-making.
Disadvantages:
- Some topics require lengthy discussion that might not be possible if meetings were limited to 50 minutes. Important viewpoints, and significant facts, might therefore end up being omitted/overlooked.
- If meetings started late for some reason, the time for discussion would be even more limited. This would be less of a limitation if a meeting lasted, say, 90 minutes.
- Shorter meetings might limit the time for, say, guest speakers or PowerPoint presentations.