Further Resources

The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible

Three weeks ago, I walked into what was supposed to be a "quick sync" that lasted two hours and forty-seven minutes. By the end, we'd covered everything from quarterly projections to someone's weekend trip to Byron Bay, but somehow missed the actual decision we needed to make. Sound familiar?

After running workshops for over fifteen years across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, I can tell you the uncomfortable truth: your meetings aren't terrible because people don't know how to facilitate them. They're terrible because we've collectively decided that calling something a "meeting" gives us permission to waste everyone's time.

The Lie We Tell Ourselves

Here's the thing that drives me mental – we blame everything except the obvious. "Oh, if only we had better technology." "If only Sarah was more organised." "If only we followed the agenda."

Mate, the agenda isn't the problem. The problem is that 78% of meetings shouldn't exist in the first place.

I learned this the hard way when I was managing a team of twelve consultants back in 2019. We were having daily standups, weekly team meetings, monthly all-hands, quarterly planning sessions, and "ad-hoc syncs" whenever someone felt like it. Everyone was constantly in meetings, but nothing was getting done. Projects were delayed, clients were frustrated, and my best performer actually quit because she said she "never had time to do actual work anymore."

That's when I implemented what I now call the "Nuclear Option." I cancelled everything. Every single recurring meeting. Gone.

The result? Productivity went up 34% in the first month. Client satisfaction improved. People started talking to each other in the hallway again instead of scheduling fifteen-minute meetings to ask simple questions.

What Actually Makes Meetings Work

Here's what I've discovered works, and some of you aren't going to like this: most effective meetings happen when someone has actual skin in the game.

The best meeting I ever attended was run by a construction foreman named Dave who had exactly forty-five minutes before the concrete truck arrived. Every word mattered. Every decision was final. No "let's circle back on this" or "can we take that offline." The truck was coming whether we were ready or not.

Compare that to the endless team development training sessions I've sat through where the biggest consequence of not reaching a decision was... having another meeting next week.

Real meetings have real deadlines. Real meetings have someone whose neck is on the line for the outcome. Real meetings end when the decision is made, not when the calendar slot expires.

The Australian Problem

We've got a particular issue here in Australia that I don't see talked about enough. We're so bloody polite that we've created this culture where calling out a pointless meeting feels rude. Someone sends a calendar invite for a "quick chat" and we all just accept it because, well, they took the time to send it.

I was working with a mining company in Perth last year – brilliant operation, safety records that would make you weep with joy – but they were drowning in meetings. The site manager told me they spent more time talking about the work than doing it. When I suggested they might have too many meetings, the response was genuinely: "But how would people feel if we didn't invite them?"

How would they feel? Probably relieved they could actually get some work done.

The obsession with inclusion has created this bizarre situation where we invite people to meetings they don't need to attend, to discuss decisions they can't influence, about topics they don't care about. And we call this "collaboration."

What Really Happens in Bad Meetings

Let me paint you a picture of the meeting you had last week. Someone called it to "align on strategy" or "touch base on the project" or some other bit of corporate speak that means absolutely nothing.

The first ten minutes were spent waiting for people to join. Then someone asked if we should wait for Jessica, who everyone knew was double-booked but no one wanted to reschedule. Then we spent fifteen minutes going around the room with "updates" that could have been a two-line email.

By minute thirty, half the room was checking phones. By minute forty-five, people were having side conversations. And somewhere around the hour mark, someone finally asked the question that revealed we didn't actually need most of the people in the room anyway.

Sound about right?

The thing is, we all recognise this pattern, but we keep doing it because we've confused activity with progress. Having lots of meetings feels important. It feels collaborative. It feels like leadership.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: effective communication doesn't require everyone to be in the same room at the same time talking about everything all at once.

The Five-Minute Rule

I've started using something I call the five-minute rule, and it's transformed how my clients think about meetings. Before scheduling any meeting, you have to be able to explain in under five minutes:

What decision needs to be made
Who has the authority to make it
What information is required to make it
What happens if we don't make it by [specific date]

If you can't do that, you don't have a meeting. You have a vague feeling that people should probably talk about something sometime.

Last month, I watched a marketing director apply this rule to her weekly team meeting. Turned out, three of the five agenda items didn't actually require decisions – they were just updates that could go in Slack. One item was waiting on information from another department that wouldn't be ready for two weeks. And the final item was actually a decision only she could make anyway.

Fifteen minutes of individual conversations replaced a two-hour team meeting. Everyone got their Friday afternoon back.

The Real Cost

Here's what kills me about bad meetings – we've all done the maths, but we ignore it anyway. Eight people in a room for two hours isn't just two hours. It's sixteen person-hours of productivity. At an average wage of $45 per hour (and that's being conservative), you've just spent $720 to accomplish what could have been done with a well-written email and three phone calls.

But the real cost isn't financial – it's cultural. Bad meetings teach people that their time doesn't matter. That decisions don't have real consequences. That talking about work is more valued than actually doing it.

I had a client in Adelaide whose team had become so trained by pointless meetings that when we finally scheduled one with actual urgency – a major client was threatening to leave – half the attendees still showed up expecting it to be another casual chat about quarterly objectives.

The client left. Because when everything's urgent, nothing's urgent.

What Actually Works

The best meetings I've ever been part of had a few things in common, and none of them involved fancy facilitation techniques or expensive software.

First, someone cared deeply about the outcome. Not just "it would be nice if we figured this out," but "my project/client/reputation depends on getting this right." Urgency can't be manufactured, but it can be recognised and leveraged.

Second, the right people were in the room. Not the people who might be interested, or who might feel left out, but the people who could actually contribute to the decision. I've seen brilliant outcomes from three-person meetings that previous versions with twelve people couldn't achieve.

Third, information was prepared, not discovered. The meeting wasn't used to gather data or catch people up – it was used to process information that everyone already had and make decisions based on it.

And finally – this is crucial – someone had the authority and willingness to end the discussion and move forward. Democracy is lovely in elections, but it's death in meetings.

The Hardest Part

The hardest part about fixing meeting culture isn't the logistics – it's the politics. Because when you start questioning whether meetings are necessary, you're implicitly questioning whether certain people's contributions are valuable.

When you stop inviting someone to a meeting because their input isn't needed for the decision, they might feel excluded. When you end a discussion before everyone has had their say, someone might feel unheard. When you insist on real agendas with actual outcomes, people who thrive on open-ended brainstorming might feel constrained.

These are real concerns, and they matter. But here's what matters more: your team's ability to actually accomplish things.

I learned this lesson working with a tech startup in Melbourne where the founder was brilliant but couldn't bear the thought of making decisions without extensive consultation. Every product feature, every hire, every marketing campaign went through rounds of meetings with rotating cast of stakeholders.

Eighteen months later, their main competitor had released three major updates while they were still debating the user interface for version one. The founder's kindness and inclusivity had paralysed the company.

Good intentions aren't enough. Results matter.

Moving Forward

So what do you do with all this? Start small. Pick the most pointless recurring meeting on your calendar – you know which one it is – and cancel it for two weeks. See what happens. My guess is that nothing catastrophic will occur, and you might discover that the important conversations happen naturally when they need to.

Then work your way up. Before scheduling your next meeting, apply the five-minute rule. Be honest about whether you need a meeting or just feel like you should have one.

And if you absolutely must have meetings, at least make them interesting. Set real deadlines. Give people actual authority. Make decisions that matter.

Your team will thank you. Your productivity will improve. And you might just remember why you enjoyed your job in the first place.

Because here's the thing – work should actually involve working. Revolutionary concept, I know.

Looking for more insights on workplace effectiveness? Check out our thoughts on communication training and professional development strategies.