WE’VE ACCEPTED MEETINGS as an unavoidable pain of working life.

“That’s what I dread on Sundays,” a manager in pharma told me. “Checking the calendar to see how many pointless meetings have been added.”

If decisions are the lifeblood of organisations – and meetings are where those decisions are supposed to happen – we’re in trouble. One client estimates that she and her counterparts are spending, on average, six hours a day on them.

A McKinsey survey found that 61% of executives say at least half their decision-making time is ineffective. So much wasted effort disguised as progress.

In the last six months, I’ve worked with at least three companies who booked presentation skills training that morphed into “meeting skills” training. Scratch beneath most teams’ problems – crossed wires, low morale, lack of focus – and you often find not incompetence but bad meetings.

Think of the global call with 200 people: half of them mute, cameras off, slides that won’t load or lull you to sleep. The hour-long “catch-up” that could have been a 10-minute chat or a two-line email. The “quick update” that spawns three follow-ups. The reflexive “let’s meet on that again next week” that keeps the wheel turning.

One client introduced a “meeting-free day … so we could actually get work done.”

A CFO I spoke to said the hardest part of her role was simple: “There’s very little thinking time.” When I asked why, she didn’t blame the economy or regulators. She blamed meetings.

Managers complain that people arrive unprepared, half-listening, or scrolling on phones. They’re also irritated by the one person who claims they’re not feeling well so they’re going to keep their camera off… “But don’t worry, I am listening.”

The same managers will admit there was no agenda because there was no clear purpose. And then the real question goes unanswered: why are we all here?

The art of inefficiency

On the Culture Kit podcast, organisational behaviour expert Rebecca Hinds – author of the forthcoming Your Best Meeting Ever – points to a chillingly relevant document: the Simple Sabotage Field Manual.

Written in 1944 by the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA), it advised citizens how to disrupt enemy organisations. One tactic? Hold meetings. Lots of them. Raise irrelevant issues. Weaponise inefficiency.

Eighty years on, we’ve perfected it ourselves.

During the pandemic we layered on tools – Zoom, Slack, Teams – supposedly to make communication easier. And they did, for a while. But then they started to amplify the noise. We got confused about where communications actually lived. Hybrid meetings promised the best of both worlds; most people say they delivered the worst.

We interact more. But what’s the quality of those interactions?

Before any meeting, the simplest, most important question should be asked: “What’s the purpose of this meeting?” In the absence of an immediate collectively clear answer, don’t meet.

10 ways to reclaim meetings if you’re in the chair

1. Ask yourself: Is this meeting necessary? Are we clear on what needs to be decided? If not, don’t call it.
2. Craft a clear, manageable agenda.
3. Circulate it in advance so people can contribute to it, know what to expect and how to prepare
4. Invite only the people essential to the decision.
5. Open the meeting with a warm, friendly tone – you set the temperature
6. Clarify quickly the purpose and what needs to be achieved by the end
7. Stay focused about time
8. Park tangents. If a deadlock forms, park the item and set a clear next step.
9. Take notes. Repeat each outcome out loud as it’s agreed, don’t wait until the end.
10. Protect outcomes: make sure everyone is clear by the end on the action, actor and timelines.

Leaders and managers should model the behaviours they want to see in others: decline unnecessary invites, set shorter meeting times, insist on agendas.

One company I worked with shortened weekly meetings from an hour to 15 minutes. Discussions became sharper, decisions quicker, and people were happier.

So before your next calendar invite goes out, pause and ask the radical question: What’s the purpose of this?

If you can’t answer it in a sentence, don’t send the invite. Send an email. Or better still, close your laptop and have a think.

Sarah Geraghty is the Head of Careers at The Communications Clinic.