Most long meetings are long for the same few reasons: nobody knew what was coming, nothing had a time limit, and the decisions were never quite pinned down. None of that needs special software to fix. These habits work with a notepad, and a little more easily with a tool built for the job.
1. Set a submission deadline, and mean it
Pick a cut-off a few days before the meeting and tell everyone. Items that arrive afterwards wait for the next meeting unless the Chair decides otherwise. A deadline turns the agenda into something that can be read in advance instead of something that is invented on the day.
2. Make it easy to raise an item
If raising an item takes a form, a login, or a phone call to the secretary, people will bring it up in the meeting instead. Accept items the way people already communicate. An email with a clear subject line is usually enough.
3. Give every item a time
A rough allocation is better than none. Five minutes for a routine matter and twenty for a major decision tells everyone where the meeting's time is going, and tells the Chair when a discussion has run past what the group agreed to spend.
4. Put the important items first
Order by importance, not by who emailed first. If time runs out, the matters that slip should be the ones that can wait. Agoraly does this by ranking items according to the sender's role for that meeting, and the Chair can still reorder them.
5. Word motions before the meeting
A motion that is drafted in advance can be moved, seconded and voted on in a minute or two. A motion that is composed live, with everyone editing the wording, can take twenty. Where an item needs a decision, say so on the agenda and attach the proposed wording.
6. Give every action an owner and a date
“We should look into that” is not an action. A named person and a due date is. Write it down before moving on, and review the open actions at the start of the next meeting so that they do not quietly disappear.
Small changes add up
None of these is dramatic. Together they change a meeting from a discussion about what to discuss into a short session where decisions get made. If you would like some of the bookkeeping done for you, that is exactly what Agoraly is for.