Notes from a tool user... is he working on my team?

I fairly recently started reading Notes from a tool user, a blog from a Canadian guy, working with scrum on a distance. Sometimes it's spooky which problems he discusses: the same as ours. Yesterday's entry was no different - the problem with retrospectives and internal meetings. And the basic problem is of course not all those annoying little things, but really some basic issues.

1. If people don't know why the meeting is held they will not behave. Not having a good agenda is the perfect setting for people not understanding the meeting. Not defining the output of the tasks on the agenda is another.
   
2. If different individuals have a different concept of what is acceptable behavior, there will be conflicts during the meeting. If one of the guys thinks talking with the girlfriend on the phone on a non urgent issue some other bloke will loose interest (if this is less important than what's for dinner tonight, then...)
3. If we don't use the the output from the meeting and don't follow up on the findings, the next meeting of this kind will not be taken seriously.

The Toyota WHY WHY WHY WHY is so important. Stop being annoyed at the little things and try to figure out what really is causing the problems.