Meetings are one of the primary ways organisations convert time into noise. This is not a new observation, and the fact that it continues to be true despite decades of complaints suggests that the problem is structural rather than merely cultural.
The Meeting Pathologies
The most common failure mode is the meeting called not to make a decision but to perform decision-making. Everyone gathers, discussion occurs, nothing is decided, a follow-up meeting is scheduled. The purpose of the meeting was to create the appearance of process without the substance of it.
A related pathology: the meeting where a decision has already been made but the meeting exists to ratify it. The decision-maker needs cover, or wants buy-in, or is uncertain and hoping someone will confirm what they already think. These meetings waste everyone’s time except the person who called them.
What Meetings Are Actually For
Meetings are appropriate for three things: decisions that require genuine real-time discussion, coordination that cannot be accomplished asynchronously, and relationship-building where the presence of people together matters.
Everything else — status updates, information sharing, problem descriptions that do not require immediate collective response — should be email, a document, or a memo. The discipline required to distinguish between these categories is harder than it sounds because meetings feel productive even when they are not. The solution is to ask, before every meeting invitation, what decision this gathering is designed to make. If the answer is unclear, the meeting is probably not necessary.