# The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible Three weeks ago, I sat through a 90-minute "alignment session" where seventeen people discussed whether the quarterly report should use blue or teal headers. Seventeen. People. For ninety minutes. About colour choices that literally nobody reading the report would notice or care about. That's when it hit me: we're not just bad at meetings. We're catastrophically, embarrassingly, soul-crushingly terrible at them. And it's not because we lack the right software or meeting room technology or fancy whiteboards. It's because we've forgotten what meetings are actually for. **Related Reading:** - [More insight here](https://www.alkhazana.net/2025/07/16/why-firms-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) - [Further reading](https://ducareerclub.net/blog) - [Other recommendations](https://ethiofarmers.com/blog) ## The Fantasy vs. The Reality Here's what we think meetings should be: a gathering of minds, pooling expertise, making decisions, moving things forward. Beautiful, isn't it? Here's what they actually are: theatrical performances where everyone pretends to be engaged while secretly planning their weekend, checking their phones under the table, and wondering why Janet from HR always brings that pen that clicks every three seconds. I've been running workshops on meeting effectiveness for twelve years now, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that 73% of meetings could be replaced with a single email. The remaining 27% could be cut in half if someone—anyone—had the courage to say "Actually, we sorted this out yesterday." But we don't. Because somewhere along the line, meetings became our security blanket. They make us feel important. They give us somewhere to be at 2pm on Tuesday. They let us tick the "collaboration" box on our performance reviews. ## The Four Horsemen of Meeting Apocalypse **1. The Inclusion Obsession** Look, I'm all for inclusive decision-making. But when you invite fourteen people to decide whether to order coffee cups or mugs for the office kitchen, you're not being inclusive. You're being ridiculous. Not every decision needs every perspective. Some decisions need the person who orders office supplies and maybe their manager. That's it. The entire marketing team doesn't need to weigh in on consumables purchasing protocols. **2. The Status Update Masquerade** "Let's go around the room and everyone share what they're working on." No. Please. Stop. Status updates aren't meetings. They're performance theatre. If you need to know what everyone's working on, look at your project management system. If you don't have one, that's a different problem entirely. I worked with [one innovative Sydney-based consultancy](https://croptech.com.sa/why-companies-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) that banned status update meetings entirely. Productivity went up 40% in three months. Coincidence? I think not. **3. The Decision Avoidance Dance** We love scheduling meetings to "discuss" things. Not to decide them. Just to discuss them. Then we schedule follow-up meetings to "dive deeper" into what we discussed. Then we schedule more meetings to "socialise" the outcomes of our discussions. Meanwhile, the original issue remains completely unresolved. I once tracked a simple office relocation decision through eleven separate meetings over four months. Eleven. The decision that finally got made? Stay in the same building. Which was option one from meeting number one. **4. The Technology Trap** We've convinced ourselves that bad meetings can be fixed with better tools. Video conferencing! Digital whiteboards! Collaborative polling platforms! AI-powered meeting assistants! Here's a radical thought: maybe the problem isn't the technology. Maybe it's that we're meeting about things that don't require meetings. ## What Actually Works (And Why You Won't Do It) The solution to terrible meetings isn't rocket science. It's just uncomfortable. **First: Kill half your recurring meetings.** Right now. Go into your calendar and delete every second recurring meeting for the next month. See what breaks. Spoiler alert: nothing will break that actually matters. **Second: Ban meetings under 25 minutes.** If it can't fill 25 minutes of meaningful discussion, it's an email. This forces you to either combine topics meaningfully or admit you're just scheduling meetings for the sake of it. **Third: Assign a decision owner before the meeting starts.** Not a facilitator. Not a scribe. A decision owner. Someone who has both the authority and the responsibility to make a call when the discussion is done. **Fourth: [Embrace the awkward silence](https://www.foodrunner.de/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/).** When someone asks a question, count to five before answering. Real thinking takes time. Most of our meetings are just knee-jerk reactions bouncing around the room like ping-pong balls. ## The Psychology Behind Our Meeting Addiction We're terrified of making decisions alone. That's the real issue. Meetings give us cover. If we make the decision in a group, it's not really our fault if it goes wrong, right? We can always say "Well, everyone agreed" or "That's what came out of the discussion." It's corporate camouflage. And it's killing our ability to move fast on anything. I learned this the hard way when I was running operations for a mid-sized training company in Melbourne. We had a weekly "strategic alignment meeting" that included eight people and lasted two hours. Every week. For six months. One week I was sick, so we cancelled it. Nothing happened. Projects continued. Decisions got made. The world didn't end. The next week, I cancelled it again. Still nothing. By month three, we'd permanently cancelled our most important meeting. And somehow became a more aligned organisation as a result. ## The Meeting Types That Actually Matter Don't get me wrong—some meetings are essential. But they're specific types, for specific purposes, with specific people. **Problem-solving sessions.** When you genuinely need multiple brains working on a complex challenge. These should be rare, focused, and time-limited. **Information-dense briefings.** When you need to communicate complex information that requires immediate clarification and discussion. Think post-incident reviews or major strategy pivots. **Creative collaboration.** When you're generating ideas that build on each other. But only if everyone in the room is actually contributing. Passengers aren't allowed on these flights. **Relationship maintenance.** Yes, sometimes you meet just to stay connected with colleagues, especially in remote teams. But call it what it is. Don't pretend it's a strategy session. ## The Australian Meeting Culture Problem We Australians have a particular challenge with meetings because we're so bloody polite about them. We'll sit through the most pointless discussions without saying anything because we don't want to seem difficult. I've seen entire teams suffer through weekly meetings that everyone agrees are useless, but nobody wants to be the one to suggest cancelling them. It's madness. [Research from leading organisational behaviour specialists](https://digifiats.com/2025/07/16/the-position-of-professional-development-courses-in-a-altering-job-market/) shows that meeting culture varies significantly by geography, and Australian businesses tend to over-compensate with inclusion at the expense of efficiency. This isn't about being rude or exclusionary. It's about respecting everyone's time enough to only gather when it actually serves a purpose. ## The Remote Work Meeting Multiplication Effect Working from home made everything worse. Suddenly, because scheduling was "easier" (no room booking required!), we started meeting about everything. Quick check-ins became standard. "Let's just jump on a call" became the default response to any question longer than three sentences. I watched one client's meeting hours triple during their first year of remote work. Triple. They were spending more time talking about work than actually doing it. The irony? The teams that adapted fastest to remote work were the ones that had already mastered asynchronous communication. They were having fewer meetings before the pandemic, and they had fewer meetings after it too. ## What Your Calendar Really Says About You Look at your calendar right now. How many meetings do you have this week? If it's more than ten, you're not a busy, important person. You're someone who hasn't learned to say no. And those back-to-back meeting days? Those aren't a badge of honour. They're a red flag that you've lost control of your time and priorities. The most effective leaders I work with have surprisingly light meeting schedules. Not because they're not involved in decisions, but because they've created systems and cultures where most decisions don't require their physical presence in a room. ## The Five-Minute Fix Here's something you can try tomorrow: start every meeting by asking "What decision are we making today?" If nobody can answer that clearly in one sentence, end the meeting. Seriously. Just end it. Thank everyone for their time, acknowledge that you need to clarify the purpose, and reschedule only once you can articulate exactly what outcome you're seeking. You'll be amazed how many meetings simply disappear when you apply this filter. ## Why This Won't Change (But Could) The depressing truth is that most organisations won't fix their meeting culture because it requires admitting that a significant portion of what they do serves no real purpose. That's uncomfortable. It's easier to complain about meeting overload while continuing to schedule them than to actually examine whether each one serves a genuine business need. But for the brave organisations that are willing to be honest about their meeting addiction, the rewards are enormous. More time for actual work. Faster decision-making. Higher employee satisfaction. Better outcomes. The choice is yours. You can keep colour-coding your calendar with different types of pointless meetings, or you can start respecting everyone's time enough to only gather when it actually matters. Me? I'm going to keep advocating for the radical position that meetings should have a point. Even if that makes me the most unpopular consultant in Melbourne. --- *Looking for more insights on workplace effectiveness? Check out our thoughts on [communication training](https://spaceleave.com/blog) and [professional development strategies](https://minecraft-builder.com/posts) for practical approaches to building better business practices.*