Staff Meetings

I used to really dread staff meetings where I served before...lots of talk no real action (at least on anything earth shattering). I don't mind talking if it leads to something. Nothing better than a good ol' knock-down-drag-out debate over some relevant ministry issue. I don't want our staff meetings to be boring, but sometimes they bog down in details that don't matter. That frustrates me.

Just read through a book called "Death By Meeting" and have to say I really liked it. It suggests having more, but also more focused/targeted meetings. A stand-up 5 minute briefing each day, weekly, quarterly and then yearly meetings. The problem I'm having is since we don't have an office (unless you count Panera, Bojangles and CiCi's), since we don't even have "real" full-time staff but bi-vocational staff, and since we have limited face-time with all of us together, how does a church plant team do the 5 minute meeting?

The answer so far is we don't and so we play a little bit of catch up at our weekly meeting sometimes and we end up bogging down. Did I say I hate that? We could try email, but that doesn't allow for real-time interaction. Maybe we could schedule daily IM's, but that seems mechanical and like overkill. Conference call? Wonder how and if it might help.

What do you suggest to help staff and key ministry leaders make sure we're all on the same page and all moving the same direction from day to day? Tried anything? Know of anything that works?