Why? In a distributed team, meetings can become a severe time sink. A lot of people hold meetings to feel busy and important, and even less people put in effort to keep the conversation focused so that the meeting ends on time.
Some basic things are:
- Determine an agenda in advance. The agenda must be part of the meeting invite. An agenda is more than "Talk about XXX." You should have a list of 3-6 topics that will be discussed in the meeting.
- Make sure that everyone on the invite list needs to be there. Explain why you're inviting people in the meeting invite.
- During the meeting, make sure that, as time progresses, the topics on the agenda are discussed. If one topic is discussed too long, there's different techniques for moving to another topic. (Binning it, declaring it a rathole, ect.)
- Decline poorly planned meetings.
And, I shouldn't need to say this, but meetings begin on time and end on time. Don't make everyone wait 45 minutes to start what's supposed to be a 30 minute meeting, but then it really drags out to 90 minutes.
Furthermore, have a 0-tolerance policy for latecomers and people who always need 15 minutes to figure out the teleconference software. Hold your interviews in the teleconference software you use with your team as a way to filter out the idiots.