My Thoughts

The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible

Three words changed everything for me: "Let's circle back."

I was sitting in my 47th pointless meeting that month when our Head of Strategy (who'd never actually implemented anything strategic in his life) dropped those three soul-crushing words. That's when it hit me - we weren't having meetings to solve problems. We were having meetings to avoid solving problems.

After seventeen years of sitting through corporate theatrics disguised as "collaborative sessions," I can tell you exactly why your meetings are terrible. And it's not what you think.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Meeting Culture

Most business experts will tell you meetings fail because of poor agenda setting or lack of clear outcomes. Rubbish. That's like saying restaurants fail because they don't have enough salt shakers.

The real problem? We've turned meetings into performance art.

Think about it. When did you last see someone genuinely change their mind in a meeting? When did someone actually admit they were wrong about something significant? Never happens. Instead, we get this elaborate dance where everyone performs their predetermined position whilst pretending to listen to others.

I've watched senior executives spend forty-five minutes discussing whether to use "optimise" or "improve" in a quarterly report. Forty-five minutes. You could've optimised three actual business processes in that time.

The Australian Problem With Consensus

Here's where we Aussies shoot ourselves in the foot. We're obsessed with getting everyone to agree, which sounds lovely in theory but creates meeting hell in practice.

Last month I was facilitating a session for a Melbourne-based logistics company. Twelve people in the room, discussing whether to change their delivery tracking system. Simple decision, right? Wrong.

Two hours later, we'd covered everything from the company Christmas party venue to someone's nephew's basketball season. Why? Because Janet from accounts was "concerned about change management" and nobody wanted to upset her.

Here's the thing - Janet hadn't used the tracking system in three years. But we spent two hours accommodating her theoretical concerns because that's what "good meeting culture" demands.

The Meeting Types That Actually Work

I'm going to share something controversial: most of your meetings shouldn't exist.

But the ones that should exist fall into exactly three categories:

Information dumps - Someone has news, they share it, everyone leaves. Fifteen minutes maximum.

Decision meetings - Present options, make choice, assign actions. Thirty minutes maximum. Proper meeting management training actually teaches this, but most managers ignore it.

Problem-solving sessions - Define problem, brainstorm solutions, test ideas. Can take hours, but everyone's actively contributing.

Everything else? Email. Slack. Carrier pigeon. Whatever. Just not a meeting.

Why Smart People Become Idiots in Meeting Rooms

Something bizarre happens when you put intelligent professionals around a conference table. They lose the ability to think critically.

I've seen a finance director who can spot a miscalculation from three pages away completely ignore obvious flaws in a marketing proposal because "it's not my area." Since when do smart people check their brains at the meeting room door?

The problem is role performance. Everyone's too busy acting like their job title instead of thinking like a human being. The HR manager feels obliged to mention "people considerations" for every decision. The IT guy highlights potential technical issues for relocating a pot plant.

Stop it. Just... stop.

Your job title doesn't mean you can't apply common sense to problems outside your immediate sphere. Some of the best business insights I've heard came from receptionists who actually talked to customers instead of spreadsheets.

The Technology Trap

"Let's share screens and collaborate in real-time!" No. Please don't.

Technology has made meetings infinitely worse, not better. We now spend the first twelve minutes of every session helping Gerald figure out why his microphone isn't working and watching Sandra accidentally share her personal email instead of the presentation.

I consulted for a Brisbane tech startup last year where they'd invested thousands in "collaborative meeting software." Revolutionary stuff, apparently. What did they use it for? To recreate exactly the same boring meetings they'd always had, but now with lag time and connectivity issues.

Sometimes the old ways work better. Whiteboard. Markers. Human brains. Radical concept.

The Meeting Facilitator's Dirty Secret

Want to know why effective communication training courses spend so much time on meeting facilitation? Because most facilitators are terrible at their jobs.

A good facilitator's job isn't to be neutral. It's to drive outcomes. But we've created this weird expectation that meeting leaders should be Switzerland - completely neutral about everything.

Wrong. If you're facilitating, you should have opinions. Strong ones. Otherwise, why are you leading the discussion?

I remember facilitating a strategic planning session where the obvious solution was staring everyone in the face. But I spent forty minutes letting people "explore alternatives" because I thought good facilitation meant staying neutral. Waste of everyone's time.

The best meeting facilitators I know are benevolent dictators. They guide discussion towards productive outcomes whilst making everyone feel heard. There's an art to it, but it starts with having actual opinions about what needs to happen.

The Action Item Theatre

"Sarah will take an action to investigate options and report back next week."

Classic. Absolutely classic. We've turned action items into get-out-of-jail-free cards. Can't make a decision? Create an action item. Don't understand the problem? Create an action item. Need more time to think? Action item.

Real action items are specific, time-bound, and assigned to someone who actually has the authority to complete them. "Investigate options" isn't an action item - it's procrastination with official documentation.

I worked with a Perth mining company where they tracked 847 action items from various meetings. Know how many got completed within the assigned timeframe? 23. Twenty-three out of 847.

They weren't running meetings. They were running action item generation factories.

What Actually Fixes Terrible Meetings

Right, enough complaining. Here's how you fix this mess:

Kill recurring meetings immediately. If it doesn't have a specific purpose this week, don't hold it this week. I don't care if it's "the Tuesday team catch-up" you've had for three years.

Invite fewer people. Much fewer. If someone doesn't have decision-making authority or specific expertise for the topic, they shouldn't be there. They can read the notes later.

Start with outcomes, not agendas. What specific decision needs to be made? What problem needs solving? If you can't answer that clearly, postpone the meeting until you can.

Set actual time limits. Not "let's aim for an hour" but "this meeting ends at 2:47pm regardless of where we are." Amazing how focused people become when there's a real deadline.

Ban phones and laptops unless they're essential for the discussion. If the meeting's interesting enough, people won't need digital distractions.

The Meeting Culture Paradox

Here's the strangest part about Australian business culture - we complain constantly about too many meetings, then schedule more meetings to discuss how to have fewer meetings.

I've facilitated "meeting efficiency workshops" where we spent three hours discussing how to make meetings more efficient. The irony was lost on absolutely everyone.

We know meetings are broken. Everyone knows it. But we keep having them because changing meeting culture feels harder than enduring bad meetings. It's like staying in a terrible relationship because breaking up seems like too much effort.

But here's what happens when you actually fix your meeting culture: productivity explodes. Decision-making accelerates. People stop dreading their calendars. Employee engagement improves because staff finally feel like their time matters.

The Uncomfortable Reality Check

Most of your meetings exist because managers don't trust their teams to work independently. There, I said it.

"Touch base sessions," "check-ins," "status updates" - they're all just sophisticated surveillance systems. We've convinced ourselves they're about "communication" and "alignment," but really they're about control.

Trust your people to do their jobs. Give them clear objectives and get out of their way. Revolutionary concept, I know.

The best teams I've worked with have fewer meetings than anyone else. Not because they communicate less, but because they communicate better. They solve problems when they occur instead of scheduling discussions about potentially solving them later.

Your meeting culture is a reflection of your management culture. Fix one, and you'll fix the other.

Stop performing collaboration and start actually collaborating. Your teams will thank you for it.

After seventeen years of untangling workplace dysfunction, I've learned that the simplest solutions are usually the right ones. Meetings included.