Further Resources

The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible (And It's Not What You Think)

The CEO walked into our boardroom last Wednesday wearing what can only be described as the smuggest expression I've seen since my neighbour discovered his Tesla could play Netflix.

"Right team," he announced, pulling out his phone to record the session for "accountability purposes," "let's revolutionise how we do meetings."

I've been consulting on workplace efficiency for the better part of two decades, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that 89% of meeting problems aren't what you think they are. Everyone blames technology, attention spans, or that one person who always derails everything with random questions about parking policies.

The real culprit? We've forgotten that meetings are supposed to be conversations, not performances.

The Performance Trap

Here's where most businesses get it wrong. Dead wrong.

They treat meetings like some sort of corporate theatre where everyone needs to demonstrate their value through participation metrics. I've watched grown adults literally count how many times each person speaks, as if quality decision-making operates on a democracy of airtime.

This is bollocks.

The best meeting I ever attended in Melbourne had twelve people in the room, and only four of them spoke. The rest were there because they needed to hear the decisions, not contribute to them. Revolutionary concept, I know.

But we've created this bizarre culture where silence equals disengagement. Where not speaking up means you're not adding value. Where every single person needs to have an opinion on everything from quarterly projections to the colour of the new corporate logo.

The Agenda Obsession

Now don't get me wrong – I'm not anti-agenda. Proper planning separates professionals from amateurs. But we've turned agendas into these rigid, military-style documents that leave no room for the unexpected insights that actually drive innovation.

I was working with a Sydney-based tech startup last year (can't name them, but they make software that actually works, which puts them ahead of 70% of their competitors). Their original meeting structure was so rigid that when someone had a breakthrough idea about user interface design, they literally said, "That's not on today's agenda, can we park it?"

Park it. A million-dollar insight got parked because it didn't fit the predetermined schedule.

That's when I knew we'd lost the plot entirely. We've become so obsessed with efficient communication training that we've forgotten the actual purpose of bringing brains together in the same room.

The Status Report Disease

Here's something that'll ruffle feathers: status meetings are almost always a waste of everyone's time.

Think about it. You've got six people earning a combined $3,000 per hour (conservative estimate in today's market) sitting around listening to Sarah from Accounts explain why the quarterly report is two days late. Information that could've been communicated in a 30-second email.

Yet we persist with this ritual because it feels productive. It feels like management.

The uncomfortable truth is that most status reports are just elaborate exercises in arse-covering. People aren't sharing information; they're performing competence. There's a difference, and it matters more than you think.

The Real Solution (It's Simpler Than You Think)

After seventeen years of sitting through more meetings than I care to count, I've identified the three elements that separate productive gatherings from time-wasting exercises:

Purpose clarity. Not agenda items. Purpose. Why are these specific people in this specific room at this specific time? If you can't answer that in one sentence, cancel the meeting.

Decision authority. Who actually has the power to decide things? Because if everyone's just there to "provide input" and the real decisions happen afterwards in someone's office, you're not having a meeting – you're having a focus group.

Outcome ownership. What happens when the meeting ends? Who's responsible for what? By when? This isn't rocket science, but apparently it's harder than quantum physics for most organisations.

I learned this the hard way during my early consulting days. Thought I was being inclusive by inviting everyone who might have an opinion. Ended up with meetings that felt like group therapy sessions where nothing ever got resolved.

The Technology Red Herring

Everyone loves to blame video conferencing for ruining meetings. "We've lost that human connection," they say. "People are distracted by screens."

Rubbish.

Bad meetings were bad long before Zoom existed. I've sat through enough painful face-to-face meetings in my career to know that proximity doesn't automatically create productivity.

The problem isn't the medium; it's the message. If your meeting lacks clear purpose and decision-making authority, it'll be equally useless whether you're in the same room or scattered across three time zones.

That said, there is something to be said for reading body language and picking up on those subtle cues that indicate when someone's about to say something important. You lose that over video. But good meeting leaders adapt their facilitation style accordingly.

The Cultural Shift We Actually Need

Here's my controversial take: we need fewer meetings with more authority, not more meetings with better agendas.

I worked with a Brisbane manufacturing company last year that reduced their weekly meetings from twelve to four. Productivity didn't suffer – it improved. Dramatically. Turns out when people aren't spending half their week in conference rooms, they actually have time to do the work they were hired to do.

But here's the kicker. The meetings they kept became significantly more intense. Higher stakes. Better preparation. Real decisions. People started treating them like they mattered because they actually did matter.

This requires a fundamental shift in how we think about collaboration. Not every decision needs input from every stakeholder. Not every discussion requires consensus. Sometimes leadership means making choices with incomplete information and accepting responsibility for the outcomes.

The Middle Management Paradox

Middle managers are the biggest victims of meeting culture, and they know it.

They're trapped between senior leadership demanding updates and front-line staff needing direction. So they end up in back-to-back meetings all day, then staying late to do their actual work.

I've seen department heads who spend less than two hours per day on non-meeting tasks. That's not management; that's administrative theatre.

The solution isn't more efficient meetings – it's questioning which meetings actually require their presence. But this requires senior leadership to trust their middle managers enough to make decisions without constant oversight.

Trust. Revolutionary concept in modern business.

What Actually Works (From Someone Who's Seen It All)

After years of testing different approaches across industries, here's what consistently produces results:

The 15-minute standing rule. If it takes longer than 15 minutes standing up, it needs either more preparation or fewer people. Physical discomfort is an excellent bullshit detector.

The decision deadline. Every meeting ends with specific decisions and deadlines. No exceptions. "We'll think about it and circle back" is banned vocabulary.

The attendance challenge. Before scheduling, ask: "Would this meeting still achieve its purpose with half the people?" Usually the answer is yes.

These aren't groundbreaking insights. They're common sense applications that most organisations ignore because they've become addicted to the illusion of productivity that comes from having lots of meetings.

The Bottom Line

Your meetings are terrible because you've forgotten they're tools, not rituals.

Tools should make work easier, faster, more effective. If your meetings aren't doing that, you're using the wrong tool for the job.

Stop trying to fix meeting culture with better agendas and start questioning whether you need the meeting at all. Sometimes the most productive meeting is the one that doesn't happen.

And if you absolutely must have it, make sure everyone knows why they're there, who's making the decisions, and what happens next.

Everything else is just corporate performance art. And frankly, we've all got better things to do.

Further Resources: If you're serious about improving your workplace communication training, start with questioning your current meeting structure. Most communication problems stem from unclear processes, not unclear people.