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The Science of Time: Techniques You’ll Learn in Management Courses

 

Meeting Madness: How Australian Businesses Are Talking Themselves to Death

 

 

If I had a dollar for every meeting I've attended that achieved absolutely nothing, I could retire to the Byron Bay tomorrow.

 

 

The average office employee now spends 42% of their week in meetings.

 

 

I estimated recently that my clients are collectively spending over $2 million per year on meetings that produce no actual decisions.

 

 

That's not including the opportunity cost of what doesn't get done while everyone's sitting around a table discussing things that could be resolved in a five-minute conversation. The meeting culture has become so entrenched that people feel guilty when they're not in meetings. I've had executives tell me they don't feel productive unless their calendar is completely booked with back-to-back sessions.

 

 

We've created a culture where being busy is more important than being useful.

 

 

What most leaders refuse to acknowledge: the majority of them are just control issues disguised as collaboration.

 

 

Think about the last "brainstorming session" you attended. How much actual useful communication happened? How many new ideas emerged?

 

 

The dirty secret of meeting culture is that most meetings exist to make executives feel like they're in control, not to actually solve problems or make progress.

 

 

This isn't collaboration - it's social performance for managers who can't communicate clearly outside of a formal setting. It's management theatre, performed for an audience of captive employees.

 

 

The meeting that nearly broke my faith in corporate sanity.

 

 

I watched a marketing department spend nearly two hours in a meeting discussing why their previous meeting had run overtime.

 

 

The first meeting ran for two hours. The agenda covered eight different projects, most of which only involved a handful of people in the room. By the end, everyone knew a little bit about everything, but nobody had the time to actually work on anything.

 

 

Within a month, they were having meetings to plan meetings, and follow-up meetings to discuss what was covered in the previous meetings. The project delays got worse, not better. The irony was completely lost on them. They genuinely couldn't see that the meeting about meetings was the exact problem they were trying to solve.

 

 

Digital meetings have removed the natural barriers that used to limit how often we got together.

 

 

In the old days, you had to book a room, coordinate schedules, and physically gather people. That friction meant you only called meetings when they were genuinely necessary.

 

 

Now you can set up a video call in thirty seconds, invite dozens people with a few clicks, and create the illusion of progress without any of the logistical constraints that used to make people think twice.

 

 

The result? Meeting explosion. What used to be a phone call is now a video conference with action items. Every day is fragmented into brief chunks between various meetings.

 

 

Here's the part that really gets me fired up: the assumption that more collaboration automatically leads to better decisions.

 

 

Over-collaboration is just as destructive as under-collaboration.

 

 

There's a reason why the most innovative companies - think Apple in their early days - were famous for minimal meetings.

 

 

Every concept needed to be presented in multiple meetings before it could move forward. The result was safe work that had been over-analysed into blandness. The creative breakthroughs died in the endless review processes.

 

 

Breakthrough thinking doesn't happen in conference rooms full of stakeholders.

 

 

We've created a whole lexicon to make pointless gatherings sound essential.

 

 

"We should probably take this offline" - translation: "I haven't thought this through, but I don't want to look unprepared."

 

 

{{"{Let's get everyone in a room|We need all the stakeholders aligned|This requires a cross-functional approach}" - translation: "I'm afraid to make a decision, so let's spread the responsibility around."|The phrase "let's unpack this" makes me want to {scream|lose my mind|run for the hills}.}}

 

 

"I'll send out a calendar invite" - translation: "Nothing will actually change, but we'll create the illusion of progress through scheduling." It's become corporate speak for "let's turn a simple issue into an hour-long discussion that resolves nothing."

 

 

But here's where I'll probably lose some people: most "collaborative" meetings are actually counterproductive to real teamwork.

 

 

Real innovation happens in quiet spaces where people can think deeply without the pressure of speaking up for an audience.

 

 

Collaboration isn't sitting in a room brainstorming from scratch - it's intelligent people bringing their best thinking to a time-limited discussion. The meetings that actually work are the ones where people come prepared, not the ones where they come to figure things out together.

 

 

So what does effective meeting culture actually look like?

 

 

First, make meetings painful to schedule.

 

 

The most successful organisations I work with have clear rules: no meeting without a defined outcome, no recurring meetings without regular review, and no meetings longer than forty-five minutes without a compelling reason.

 

 

Some teams assign a dollar cost to meetings based on the hourly rates of attendees. When you see that your "quick sync" is costing $1,200 per hour, you start to think differently about whether it's necessary. The quality improvements are usually dramatic.

 

 

Separate communication from collaboration.

 

 

The majority of meeting time is wasted on information that could be shared more effectively through email.

 

 

The meetings that justify their time are the ones focused on problems that require immediate feedback. Everything else - status reports - should happen through asynchronous channels.

 

 

I worked with a advisory business that replaced their weekly progress reviews with a simple weekly report. Meeting time dropped by two-thirds, and project visibility actually improved. Everyone can see what's happening without sitting through verbal updates.

 

 

Stop treating inclusion as the highest virtue.

 

 

The obsession with stakeholder involvement has created meeting inflation where large groups discuss issues that could be resolved by the right people.

 

 

Stakeholder engagement is important for strategic changes, but not every choice requires universal agreement. Most operational decisions should be made by the roles closest to the work. They understand that additional voices isn't always valuable voices.

 

 

Here's the metric that changed everything for me:

 

 

Measure the proportion of time spent in planning sessions compared to tangible results.

 

 

For most organisations, the ratio is terrifying. They're spending four hours discussing every one hour of actual work.

 

 

Sometimes the ratio is even worse. High-performing organisations flip this ratio. They spend minimal time in meetings and extensive time on execution. The talking serves the doing, not the other way around.

 

 

That's not productivity - it's dysfunction.

 

 

The emotional investment in meeting culture is worth examining.

 

 

For many managers, meetings provide a sense of importance that actual work doesn't offer. In a meeting, you can guide the conversation, demonstrate your value, and feel necessary to organisational success.

 

 

Implementation is often independent, risky, and doesn't provide the same immediate feedback as facilitating a meeting. The meetings become evidence of your commitment, even if they don't produce value.

 

 

There's definitely a place for team problem-solving.

 

 

The sessions that work are short, thoroughly organised, and outcome-driven. They bring together the key stakeholders to make decisions that require collaborative discussion.

 

 

Everything else is just organisational theatre that wastes the time and energy that could be spent on meaningful work. They're selective about when to use them, disciplined about how to run them, and honest about whether they're working.

 

 

What I wish every executive understood about meetings:

 

 

Effective meetings create action that reduces the need for future meetings.

 

 

Ineffective meetings multiply like bacteria.

 

 

Choose accordingly.

 

 

The future of Australian effectiveness depends on it.

 

 

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