# The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible **Related Reading:** [Read more here](https://skillcoaching.bigcartel.com/blog) | [More insight](https://sewazoom.com/blog) | [Further reading](https://ethiofarmers.com/blog) I watched a grown man cry in a conference room last Thursday. Not from joy, mind you. From sheer frustration after sitting through another two-hour "alignment session" that could've been sorted with a fifteen-minute phone call. The poor bloke had been with the company for eight years, and this was apparently his breaking point with meeting culture. Here's what nobody wants to admit: your meetings aren't terrible because you don't have the right agenda template or fancy collaboration software. They're terrible because most managers fundamentally misunderstand what meetings are actually for. After twenty-three years of sitting in conference rooms from Darwin to Hobart, I've noticed something. The companies with the worst meeting cultures are usually the ones with the most meeting policies. It's like they're trying to legislate their way out of poor communication skills. ## The Three Types of Meeting People Let me break this down for you. In every organisation, you've got three types of meeting participants: **The Validators** - These people call meetings to get approval for decisions they've already made. They're not looking for input; they're looking for nodding heads. Waste of everyone's time. **The Processors** - These folks genuinely need to talk through problems with other humans to reach solutions. They're the ones asking real questions and building on ideas. Gold. **The Avoiders** - They schedule meetings instead of making difficult decisions or having uncomfortable conversations. [More information here](https://mauiwear.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) about avoiding these workplace dynamics. These meetings feel like being trapped in bureaucratic quicksand. The problem is, most managers don't know which type they are. They certainly don't know which type their team members are. So they treat all meetings the same way. ## Why Australian Businesses Are Particularly Bad at This We've got this cultural thing where we hate appearing too keen or pushy. So instead of just saying "I need you to approve this budget," we schedule a meeting to "explore our strategic options around resource allocation." It's painful to watch. I worked with a Melbourne-based tech startup last year where the CEO was scheduling daily stand-ups, weekly team meetings, monthly all-hands, quarterly strategy sessions, and annual planning retreats. The team was spending more time talking about work than actually doing it. When I suggested they scrap everything except the weekly team check-ins, you'd have thought I suggested they start sacrificing goats to the productivity gods. But here's the thing - after three months of fewer meetings, their project delivery improved by 40%. [Here is the source](https://ydbvideolight.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) that tracks similar workplace efficiency improvements. Not because people were working harder. Because they had uninterrupted time to actually focus. ## The Real Purpose of Meetings (That Nobody Talks About) Meetings serve exactly three legitimate purposes: 1. **Information sharing** (but only when it needs to be interactive) 2. **Collaborative problem-solving** (when multiple perspectives genuinely add value) 3. **Relationship building** (the stuff that happens before and after the formal agenda) Everything else is just corporate theater. The dirty secret? Most meetings are really about the third thing - relationship building - but we pretend they're about the first two. So we end up with this awkward dance where everyone's trying to look productive while what's really happening is social bonding and status positioning. That's not necessarily bad, by the way. Teams need social connection. But let's just be honest about it instead of pretending every gathering needs deliverables and action items. ## The Meeting Paradox Nobody Mentions Here's something I've noticed after years of [consulting on workplace efficiency](https://www.alkhazana.net/2025/07/16/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/): the teams that have the most meetings often have the worst communication. Think about it. If you're constantly scheduling formal sessions to "touch base" and "circle back," what does that say about your everyday communication? It suggests that normal, ongoing dialogue isn't happening naturally. The best teams I've worked with - and I'm thinking specifically of a construction crew in Perth and a marketing agency in Brisbane - barely have formal meetings at all. They just... talk to each other. Constantly. About work, about problems, about solutions. When something needs group input, it happens organically. ## Why Your Meeting Technology Isn't Helping We've all been sold this lie that better meeting technology will fix our meeting problems. Zoom fatigue is real, but it's not because of Zoom. It's because we're trying to replicate terrible in-person meeting habits in a digital environment. I've seen companies spend thousands on interactive whiteboards, polling software, and collaboration platforms, then use them to run the exact same pointless status updates they used to do around a table. The technology isn't the problem. Your fundamental approach to group communication is the problem. ## The Economics of Meeting Overload Let's do some basic maths here. If you've got eight people in a room for an hour, that's eight hours of combined human productivity. If those people are earning an average of $50 per hour (including on-costs), you've just spent $400. For one meeting. Most organisations run hundreds of meetings per month. Do the calculation yourself. [Further information here](https://digifiats.com/2025/07/16/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) on workplace cost analysis. You're looking at tens of thousands of dollars monthly just on meeting time. And that's before you consider the opportunity cost of what didn't get done during those hours. Yet somehow, when it comes to meetings, we throw economic thinking out the window. We wouldn't spend $400 on office supplies without proper justification, but we'll burn through that much in meeting costs without thinking twice. ## What Actually Works (Based on Real Examples) I've got a client in Adelaide - a mid-sized manufacturing company - that completely overhauled their meeting culture two years ago. They implemented what they call "permission to leave" protocols. Anyone can walk out of any meeting if they're not adding or receiving value. No explanation required. Sounds chaotic, right? Actually, it forced meeting organisers to be crystal clear about why each person was needed and what role they were expected to play. Meeting attendance dropped by 60%. Meeting satisfaction scores went through the roof. Another company I worked with - a professional services firm in Sydney - banned all recurring meetings. If you wanted to schedule a weekly check-in, you had to manually send calendar invites each week. [Personal recommendations](https://www.foodrunner.de/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) from productivity researchers support this approach. Sounds like a pain? It meant people actually thought about whether each meeting was necessary. About half of their "regular" meetings just... stopped happening. Nobody missed them. ## The Status Game Nobody Acknowledges Let's be brutally honest about something. A lot of meeting culture is about status and perceived importance. Being invited to lots of meetings feels important. Running meetings feels powerful. Being too busy with meetings feels professional. I've seen middle managers schedule unnecessary meetings just to demonstrate their relevance to the organisation. I've seen senior executives insist on being invited to operational meetings where they add no value, just to maintain visibility. This is human nature, not corporate evil. But it's destroying productivity and morale. We need to find other ways for people to feel valued and important that don't involve wasting everyone's time. ## The Australian Solution Here's my controversial take: we should embrace our cultural discomfort with over-formalised processes. Australians are naturally good at informal, direct communication. We just need to trust that instinct more in workplace settings. Instead of scheduling a meeting to "discuss the quarterly targets," why not just walk over to someone's desk and say, "The quarterly targets are worrying me. What do you think?" Instead of a weekly team meeting, why not suggest, "Let's grab coffee on Friday morning and catch up on how the week went." I know this makes HR departments nervous. It's harder to document and track. But it's also more human, more efficient, and more likely to result in actual problem-solving. ## Where We're Getting It Wrong The biggest mistake I see organisations make is treating all meetings like formal business processes that need structure, documentation, and follow-up actions. Sometimes a meeting is just a conversation. Sometimes the value is in the talking, not in the outcomes. But we've professionalised meeting culture to the point where every gathering needs objectives, agendas, and measurable results. It's exhausting and often counterproductive. ## Moving Forward Look, I'm not anti-meeting. I'm anti-bad meetings. There's a difference. Good meetings feel energising. People leave with clarity, enthusiasm, or genuine insight. Bad meetings feel like time theft. People leave confused, frustrated, or wondering why they were there. The solution isn't better meeting templates or more training on facilitation skills. The solution is being honest about what you're trying to achieve and whether a meeting is actually the best way to achieve it. Most of the time, it isn't. **Sources:** [Other blogs](https://umesbalsas.org/blog) | [Related articles](https://www.imcosta.com.br/blog)