 How do you keep meetings short?
reduxredacted: It's a tricky problem as a participant and it depends on the individual who's dragging the topic on.I find this problem to be more the fault of the facilitator than the participant.  There's always an opportunity to say "I understand your concerns, lets take this offline so we can continue with our discussion."As a participant, depending on who is hosting, you may step all over sensitive toes if you try to correct the individual in question.When I host I have a few rules.  I always start on time and avoid repeating myself for people who arrive late.  I define the purpose of the meeting up-front.  I never schedule more than 30 minutes.  I stop people who bloviate or go off topic by suggesting a possible follow-up (often unnecessary).And the most useful opening line is "Though I booked 30 minutes, I want to value everyone's time, so I think we can [insert purpose for meeting here] and have plenty of time to spare."  Any variation of that seems to get people to pay attention and contribute because there's an expectation that we'll get somewhere, and be done quickly.As a participant: If I know the meeting organizer well enough, it's a conference call and the organizer is not sharing their desktop, a simple IM to them host saying "Land the plane." or "Find a way to shut him/her down.", perhaps with more carefully chosen words depending my relationship with the meeting host helps.If you feel comfortable enough with the host, content and meeting arrangement you may find that you take over for the host as a participant.  Be careful, though, some peoples' egos bruise easily.