The stat that will surprise no one: more than 60% of meetings have no agenda at all. No stated purpose, no direction, no clear reason for existing beyond the fact that they’re already there. Research from Atlassian paints an even grimmer picture: meetings are ineffective 72% of the time, while 78% of people say it’s hard to get their work done because of meetings.
And yet, we keep showing up.
We know meetings suck. But yet, most companies/managers haven’t put in the effort to figure out better ways to collaborate (which might be asynchronously, at a coffee shop, cameras off, etc).
The issue isn’t that meetings are inherently bad, per se. I worked for a company that was very meeting-averse, because the whole team worked asynchronously. We’d only hop on a meeting when the back-and-forth via our project management tool started to get out of control. In that case, it was faster to hop in a meeting and hash things out (and document the decision after the fact).
But on the whole, many people don’t question whether a meeting is the right tool for collaboration. Instead of evaluating the options, we accept the calendar invite (and then wonder why we have Zoom fatigue by 3 p.m.).
Meetings as a default way of collaborating were born during a completely different era of work. Everyone showed up to the same building at 9 a.m., sat in the same conference room, and didn’t have technology to collaborate. Those constraints no longer exist, but the habits remain. They persist not because they’re effective, but because they serve a different purpose entirely: management’s need for visibility and control.
Stuck in a meeting rut
When remote work skyrocketed during the pandemic, it was an opportunity to rethink meetings. We didn’t. We just took the structure of a physical meeting and moved it online.
Not only that, but meetings increased. According to Microsoft’s own data from that year, weekly meeting time jumped 10% almost immediately after offices closed. For the average employee, this was an additional three meetings per week.
To a large extent, I get it. That was a very difficult time since many people abruptly changed their work environments (moving from in-office to a home workspace). People were overwhelmed, and it wasn’t the time to imagine new ways of working. But we’ve had plenty of time since then, and meetings are still terrible.
There’s also a disconnect between workplace flexibility and how meetings are structured. You can work from home, from a co-working space, from a different time zone. And yet, that flexibility rarely extends to how people collaborate. The contradiction is glaring. We acknowledge that people work best at different times and in different environments, but force everyone into the same synchronous meeting format regardless.
Part of this is about optics. Meetings create the appearance of productivity. People in meetings look like people who are working. For remote employees in particular, visibility becomes a proxy for engagement. If you’re not on camera, what are you doing? Meetings scheduled “in the name of transparency” are often just performative — a way for managers and leadership to skirt the harder work of trusting their teams to get the job done.
Asynchronous communication could handle many of these “updates” more efficiently. A written summary takes five minutes to read. I actually think this is a good use case for AI, scouring an email inbox (for example) and writing a succinct recap that keeps the team informed.
A 30-minute meeting takes 30 minutes, plus the context-switching on either side. But async only works if managers are willing to let go of the comfort that comes from seeing faces on a screen and hearing voices in real time. And have to come up with an asynchronous format that’s actually meaningful and not furthering performative work.
Rethinking how we collaborate
Too many people have made “meeting” synonymous with “collaboration.” Companies are stuck in the belief that if people aren’t on a scheduled call, they’re not really working together. But some of the best collaboration happens in writing, over days, with time to think. It happens while out on a walk, when the creative juices are flowing. It happens in environments that look nothing like a conference room or a grid of faces on a video call.
The solution isn’t “better meetings.” It’s questioning whether a meeting is the right tool in the first place.
Before scheduling one, ask yourself what you’re actually trying to accomplish.
Quick question? How about a Slack message or a short Loom video.
Brainstorming? Start as a collaborative doc that everyone contributes to before a short meeting.
A decision that requires input from people? Maybe a 30-minute call, not 60 minutes, with the agenda shared in advance.
Status updates? That’s a written recap. No meeting required.
If you’re on the receiving end of meeting invites, push back. Ask, “Can we do this async?” or “Do we need the full hour?” If you can, block off meeting-free time on your calendar. Protect this time so you can actually get work done.
True collaboration flexibility means having no default at all. If there’s no automatic assumption that a meeting is the answer, people are forced to actually think about the goal. “Easy for the system” (i.e., maintaining the structure of meetings) rarely means “effective for the people.” And the people — not the system — should be the driving factor.
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