# The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible (And It's Not What You Think) **Related Reading:** [More Insight](https://learningstudio.bigcartel.com/blog) | [Further Information](https://sewazoom.com/what-to-anticipate-from-a-communication-skills-training-course/) | [Additional Resources](https://www.alkhazana.net/2025/07/16/why-firms-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) The conference room smelled like stale coffee and broken dreams. Again. As I watched twelve supposedly intelligent professionals stare at their phones while someone droned on about "synergistic optimisation," I had an epiphany that nearly made me laugh out loud. We've been solving the wrong problem entirely. For the past decade, I've sat through approximately 2,847 meetings (yes, I counted during one particularly excruciating quarterly review). I've seen companies spend fortunes on meeting room technology, facilitator training, and productivity software. Yet somehow, meetings keep getting worse. The real culprit isn't lack of agendas or poor time management. **It's the fundamental misunderstanding of what meetings actually are.** Most business leaders think meetings are information transfer sessions. Wrong. Dead wrong. Information transfer happens beautifully through emails, project management systems, and [detailed documentation processes](https://ethiofarmers.com/what-to-anticipate-from-a-communication-skills-training-course/). When you use a meeting to share information that could've been an email, you're essentially paying $500 an hour for someone to read you a bedtime story. Here's what meetings actually are: decision-making forums and relationship-building exercises. That's it. Those are the only two reasons to gather humans in a room (physical or virtual). ## The Brisbane Breakthrough Last year, I was consulting with a Brisbane-based manufacturing firm whose meetings had become legendary for all the wrong reasons. Three-hour weekly reviews where nothing got decided. Status updates that could've been handled by their existing tracking software. The CEO was spending 40% of his time in meetings that generated zero outcomes. I implemented what I call the "Two-Purpose Rule." Every meeting request must explicitly state whether it's for: 1. Making a specific decision that requires group input, or 2. Building relationships between team members If it doesn't fit one of these categories, it becomes an email, a phone call, or gets cancelled entirely. The results? Meeting time reduced by 67% within six weeks. Decision velocity increased dramatically. And here's the kicker - employee satisfaction scores went up because people finally felt their time was respected. But here's where most consultants get it wrong... ## The Relationship Paradox Everyone bangs on about "building relationships" in meetings, but they approach it like a corporate team-building exercise. Painful icebreakers. Forced small talk. The dreaded "tell us something interesting about yourself" round-robin that makes introverts want to crawl under the conference table. Real relationship building in professional settings happens through shared problem-solving and witnessing each other's thinking processes. When Sarah from Marketing explains her reasoning for the campaign strategy, and David from Finance challenges her assumptions respectfully, they're not just making a decision. They're learning how each other's minds work. This is why those terrible "brainstorming sessions" where everyone throws ideas at a whiteboard actually serve a purpose - but not the one intended. The ideas are usually rubbish (let's be honest), but the process reveals personality types, work styles, and communication preferences. **The best meetings I've ever attended felt like watching a master craftsperson at work.** You could see the decision-making process unfold in real-time. Different perspectives colliding. Assumptions being tested. Minds changing based on new information. ## The Technology Trap Don't get me started on meeting technology. We've created these elaborate digital environments - screen sharing, breakout rooms, collaborative whiteboards - that somehow make human connection even more difficult. I was in a "hybrid" meeting last month where half the team was physically present and half were joining virtually. The in-person folks kept forgetting about the remote participants. The remote folks couldn't read the room's energy. It was like watching two different meetings happening simultaneously. Yet companies keep doubling down on technology solutions. [Advanced communication systems](https://www.floreriaparis.cl/what-to-anticipate-from-a-communication-skills-training-course/) and sophisticated collaboration platforms that miss the fundamental point: humans are analog creatures trying to connect in digital spaces. The solution isn't better technology. It's being more intentional about when and why we meet. ## The Australian Way There's something about Australian business culture that actually gets this right more often than our overseas counterparts. We tend to be more direct about time-wasting. Less tolerance for corporate theatre. I've noticed this particularly when working with American companies. They'll schedule 60-minute meetings out of habit, even when the topic could be resolved in 15 minutes. Then they'll spend the remaining 45 minutes creating work for themselves just to fill the time. Australians are more likely to say, "Right, are we done here?" and actually end early. Revolutionary concept, apparently. ## The Decision Architecture When meetings are genuinely about making decisions, they need what I call "decision architecture." This isn't about following some rigid framework - it's about understanding the anatomy of how groups actually make choices. **First, you need the right people.** Not everyone who's interested. Not everyone who might be affected. The specific people who have the authority, information, and responsibility to make this particular decision. Usually 3-5 people maximum. **Second, you need decision criteria established upfront.** What constitutes success? What are the constraints? What's the timeline? Most groups skip this step and then wonder why they can't reach consensus. **Third, you need someone willing to make the final call.** Democracy is lovely in theory, but it's death to business decisions. Someone needs to synthesise the input and choose a direction. I learned this the hard way during a project with a Perth-based tech startup. Six months of "collaborative decision-making" that resulted in exactly zero decisions. Everyone had input. No one had authority. The product launch was delayed because the team couldn't decide on the colour scheme for the user interface. The founder finally stepped in, made five key decisions in 30 minutes, and the product shipped two weeks later. Sometimes leadership means ending the discussion and choosing a path forward. ## The Meeting Audit Here's an exercise I give every client: audit your last ten meetings. For each one, write down: - What decision was made? - What relationships were strengthened? - What could've been accomplished without gathering everyone together? Most people are horrified by the results. Meeting after meeting with no concrete outcomes. Hours of collective human potential wasted on status updates and information sharing. The companies that take this seriously and restructure their meeting culture see immediate improvements in both productivity and morale. [Proper training in meeting facilitation](https://mauiwear.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) becomes incredibly valuable when you're actually trying to achieve something specific. ## The Uncomfortable Truth Here's the part that makes executives uncomfortable: most bad meetings exist because leaders are avoiding hard decisions or difficult conversations. It's easier to schedule another "discussion" than to actually choose a direction. I've seen teams spend months "gathering input" on decisions that the CEO already knew needed to be made. The meetings become a form of decision procrastination. Everyone gets to feel heard, but nothing moves forward. Sometimes the best meeting is the one you don't have. When you're clear on the outcome you need and willing to make the tough calls, suddenly you need far fewer collaborative sessions. ## The Future of Getting Together As remote work becomes more normalised, we're going to need to be even more intentional about when and why we gather people. The casual hallway conversations that used to handle relationship building are gone. The impromptu problem-solving sessions are extinct. This means our formal meetings need to work harder. They need to serve both the decision-making and relationship-building functions more efficiently. I predict we'll see more companies adopting what I call "asymmetric meeting schedules." Some teams might have intensive face-to-face sessions once a month, with minimal meetings in between. Others might prefer brief daily check-ins but no long-form sessions. The key is matching the meeting format to the actual human and business needs, rather than defaulting to the standard 60-minute calendar block because that's what we've always done. Stop pretending that all meetings serve the same purpose. Stop using them as a substitute for clear communication and decisive leadership. And for the love of all that's holy, stop scheduling meetings to plan other meetings. Your future self will thank you. And so will everyone who currently dreads seeing your name pop up in their calendar invitations. The best meeting might be the one you decide not to have at all.