The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible

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Three weeks ago, I sat through my 47th pointless meeting of the month. Yes, I counted. And no, I don't have that kind of time either, but sometimes you need hard data to make a point stick.

The meeting was supposed to be about "quarterly alignment" – whatever the hell that means. Twelve people crammed into a room that smells like reheated coffee and broken dreams, staring at a PowerPoint that could've been an email. But here's the kicker: the real decisions were made in the hallway afterwards between three people who actually understood what we were trying to achieve.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. Because 73% of meetings are fundamentally broken, and it's not for the reasons you think.

The Three Meeting Myths That Keep You Trapped

Most business advice about meetings is rubbish. Complete and utter rubbish. They tell you to have agendas (which everyone ignores), set time limits (which get blown past anyway), and "stay focused" (while Karen from accounting derails everything with her vendor payment crisis).

The real problem isn't structure. It's not even bad leadership, though that doesn't help.

The real problem is that we've forgotten what meetings are actually for.

Myth 1: Meetings Are for Information Sharing

Wrong. Information sharing is what emails, Slack, and properly written reports are for. If you're reading slides aloud to adults, you're doing it wrong. Full stop.

I learned this the hard way during my corporate days at a major telecommunications company in Melbourne. We had weekly "update meetings" where fifteen department heads would drone through their status reports while everyone else checked their phones. The meeting ran for two hours. Every. Single. Week.

Then COVID hit, and suddenly those meetings became five-minute video calls where people actually shared only the important stuff. Productivity went up 40%. Coincidence? I think not.

Myth 2: More People Means Better Decisions

This one drives me mental. I've seen companies invite entire departments to "decision-making" meetings because they want everyone to feel included. Noble intention, terrible execution.

The optimal decision-making group is three to five people max. Any more than that and you're running a focus group, not making decisions. Jeff Bezos got this right with his "two pizza rule" – if you can't feed the meeting with two pizzas, there are too many people there.

But here's where Bezos doesn't go far enough. Those people need to have actual authority to implement the decision. Otherwise, you're just creating expensive consensus theatre.

Myth 3: Regular Meetings Build Team Culture

This is the most dangerous myth because it sounds so reasonable. "Let's have weekly team meetings to stay connected." "Monthly all-hands keep everyone informed." "Quarterly planning sessions align our vision."

Bollocks.

Regular meetings build resentment, not culture. Culture gets built when people accomplish meaningful work together, solve problems collaboratively, and actually deliver results. Sitting in a room talking about work isn't work – it's just expensive procrastination.

What Meetings Are Actually For

After 18 years of running my own consultancy and fixing broken workplace processes, I've identified exactly three legitimate reasons to gather people in a room:

1. Complex Problem Solving That Requires Multiple Perspectives

Notice I said "complex" and "requires." If the problem can be solved by one person thinking about it for an hour, don't waste everyone's time. But when you're dealing with interdisciplinary challenges where marketing insights collide with operational realities and financial constraints, that's when you need brains in a room.

I worked with a Brisbane manufacturing firm last year that was losing money on every large order despite healthy margins on paper. Took a two-hour meeting with production, sales, and finance to figure out the delivery scheduling was creating overtime costs that sales never factored in. One meeting, $200K annual savings. That's what meetings should accomplish.

2. Relationship Building Between People Who Don't Normally Work Together

This is where the team culture advocates get it half right. Meetings can build relationships, but only when they bring together people who don't usually collaborate and give them a shared challenge to tackle.

Cross-departmental project kickoffs? Brilliant. Innovation workshops with mixed teams? Absolutely. Weekly status updates with the same five people who sit near each other anyway? Complete waste of everyone's life.

3. High-Stakes Negotiation or Conflict Resolution

Some conversations need to happen face-to-face. When there's significant money, reputation, or relationships on the line, digital communication loses too much nuance. You need to see body language, manage emotional dynamics, and build trust in real time.

But – and this is crucial – these meetings need a skilled facilitator who can navigate tension and keep things productive. Most managers think they're good at this. Most managers are wrong.

The Meeting Audit That Changed Everything

Here's an exercise that'll terrify your entire leadership team: audit your meeting culture for one month. Track every meeting, who attends, how long it runs, and what concrete outcomes emerge.

I did this with a Perth-based consultancy that was burning through talent faster than a bushfire in summer. Their senior consultants were spending 22 hours per week in meetings. Twenty-two hours! That's more than half their billable time evaporating into "alignment" and "touch-bases."

The results were shocking:

• 64% of meetings produced no actionable outcomes
• The same issues were discussed in multiple forums with overlapping attendees
• Junior staff spent more time reporting on work than actually doing work
• Decision-making took 3x longer than necessary due to "consultation fatigue"

After implementing what I call the "Three Question Filter," they cut meeting volume by 60% and saw their highest revenue quarter in company history.

The Three Question Filter

Before scheduling any meeting, answer these three questions honestly:

1. What specific decision needs to be made or problem solved that requires multiple brains?

If you can't articulate this in one clear sentence, cancel the meeting. "Getting everyone aligned" isn't specific enough. "Deciding whether to launch the premium service tier before Christmas given our current technical constraints and sales capacity" is specific.

2. Who are the minimum number of people needed to make this decision stick?

Not who might have opinions. Not who should be kept informed. Who actually needs to commit resources or authority for the outcome to matter? Everyone else gets the summary email.

3. What will we have accomplished that we couldn't achieve through other means?

If the meeting is just information transfer, send a document. If it's brainstorming, use collaborative tools. If it's relationship building with your existing team, grab coffee or work on a project together. Meetings should be your last resort, not your first instinct.

The Technology Red Herring

Before you blame Zoom fatigue or suggest another collaboration platform, understand this: technology doesn't fix broken meeting culture. It just makes bad meetings slightly more convenient.

I've seen companies spend thousands on fancy meeting room displays, wireless presentation systems, and scheduling software while continuing to have fundamentally pointless gatherings. It's like buying a faster car to make traffic jams more bearable.

The best communication training I ever attended wasn't about technology at all. It was about learning when to shut up and when to speak up. Revolutionary concept, apparently.

What Good Meetings Actually Look Like

I'll give you a specific example from my own business. Once a quarter, I gather my core team for what we call a "Future Shock" session. Four people, three hours, one simple agenda: identify the biggest threat to our business model over the next 18 months and create contingency plans.

No status updates. No feel-good team building. No death by PowerPoint.

We argue, we challenge assumptions, we dig into uncomfortable truths about market changes and competitive threats. It's not always pleasant, but it's always productive. Every session has prevented at least one significant mistake or identified one major opportunity.

That's what meetings should feel like: intense, focused, and absolutely essential.

The Cultural Shift You Actually Need

The hardest part of fixing meeting culture isn't the logistics – it's changing the underlying belief that busy equals important and meetings equal productivity.

I see this especially in professional services firms where "billable hours" dominate thinking. Partners feel guilty about not being in meetings because it feels like they're not working. Junior staff think attending lots of meetings makes them look engaged and valuable.

Both groups are wrong.

Your most valuable people should spend most of their time doing deep work that only they can do. Leadership development happens through coaching individuals and making tough decisions, not sitting through progress reports.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Status Quo

Here's what nobody wants to admit: most organisations love their broken meeting culture because it creates the illusion of collaboration without the messiness of actual accountability.

When everything is "discussed" in meetings but nothing is actually decided, everyone can feel important without taking real responsibility. It's consensus theatre that protects egos and distributes blame.

Real collaboration is messier. It requires clear ownership, honest disagreement, and the courage to make decisions with incomplete information. It means some people get to make calls that others don't like. It means efficiency over inclusion.

Most companies aren't ready for that level of honest accountability. They'd rather schedule another meeting to "explore options" and "gather more input."

Start Small, Think Big

You can't fix meeting culture overnight, but you can start with yourself. For the next month:

• Decline any meeting that doesn't pass the Three Question Filter
• Ask for agendas 24 hours in advance or don't attend
• Leave meetings that drift off purpose after 10 minutes
• Send "no meeting necessary" responses with alternative solutions

Will this make you popular? Probably not initially. Will it make you more effective and give you back 8-10 hours per week? Absolutely.

And here's the beautiful part: when people see you're still getting excellent results (possibly better results) while attending fewer meetings, they'll start questioning their own calendar bloat.

The Bottom Line

Your meetings are terrible because you're using them for everything except what they're actually good for. Stop trying to fix bad meetings with better processes and start eliminating unnecessary meetings entirely.

The goal isn't perfect meetings. The goal is fewer meetings that actually matter.

Most of your "urgent" meetings can wait until tomorrow. Most of your "important" decisions can be made by fewer people. Most of your "alignment" conversations can happen over coffee or through focused project work.

Time is the only resource you can't manufacture more of. Stop donating it to meeting culture that serves everyone's comfort zone and no one's actual objectives.

Because here's the thing about those 47 meetings I mentioned at the start: only three of them changed anything meaningful. The other 44 were just expensive ways to avoid making decisions.

The question isn't whether you can afford to have fewer meetings. The question is whether you can afford not to.