The Perfect Meeting

In the mid-2000s, I worked at a company that LOVED a good meeting. Actually, to be more accurate, they loved a meeting, whether it was good or not. There was barely a problem for which calling a meeting was not the proposed solution. Almost every day, we would hear the phrase “let’s get everyone on the same page” and know that another hour on our calendars would be swallowed up.

The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the company was spread over a large campus, so if there were back-to-back meetings, many of us were guaranteed to show up late. After we’d muttered our apologies, the meeting would start again, so we could be “caught up”.

Then, one day, leadership proposed something radical: Every 60-minute meeting would now be 50 minutes, starting at five past the hour and finishing at five to. Every… single…meeting—by official policy. “School bells” were installed in meeting rooms, and when the bell rang, we were required to leave.

Initially, there was resistance to this seemingly domineering move, but it was very short-lived. It turned out that cutting ten minutes made no meaningful difference to the content of the meeting. With a built-in break, people showed up fresher and more engaged. The shift also started a broader conversation about what a great meeting could look like. Teams began experimenting with the new 50 minutes, tweaking their approach, and treating meetings like something to be optimized rather than endured.

Two years later, meetings were shortened again to 45 minutes, with zero measurable reduction in productivity.

The Most Frustrating Part of Work?

For many of us, meetings are the most significant time suck at work. Some days, they feel endless, a parade of conversations that leave us with more action items but no time to actually do them.

But having researched meetings for years, I’d argue that meetings themselves are not the problem. It’s how we hold them.

So, what makes a meeting work? It turns out the answer lies in being purposeful across three key phases: what happens before, during, and after the meeting.

Before the Meeting: Set It Up for Success

The most effective meetings start before anyone steps into the room (or logs onto Zoom). If you want a meeting to be useful, here’s a checklist of questions to answer:

• Should the meeting even happen? If the meeting’s purpose is unclear or if the meeting could be better served in another way (e.g., offline update), cancel it.
• What’s the agenda? Even a simple bulleted list that you follow can help focus the discussion and keep people from wandering off into unrelated topics.
• What do people need to know? If there’s background material, send it in advance and set the expectation that attendees come prepared. Don’t waste time reviewing things people should have read already.
• Who should attend? Meetings aren’t performances. If someone won’t contribute meaningfully to the discussion, they don’t need to be there. You can send them the notes instead.

During the Meeting: Maximize the Time

Once the meeting starts, it’s essential to stay focused and efficient. Here’s how to ensure that:

• Start on time. If you wait for latecomers, you’re training people to be late.
• Expect full attention. One person checking email signals to everyone else that the meeting doesn’t matter. Set the standard upfront.
• Stick to the agenda. If something off-topic comes up, park it for later.
• Include remote participants. Hybrid meetings fail when in-person attendees dominate. Make space for everyone.
• Document clear action items and summarize them at the end. Every meeting should conclude with decisions, owners, and next steps. No exceptions.

After the Meeting: Make It Stick

The best meetings don’t end when people leave the room. What happens after is just as important:

• Send a summary. The notes should capture decisions made, action items, and who is responsible for what.
• Follow up. If an action item was assigned to you, do it. If you ran the meeting, check in to see if things are moving forward.
• Evaluate. Ask yourself: Did this meeting need to happen? Could it have been shorter? What could be improved next time?

The Space Between Meetings

One of the biggest takeaways from my early experience with those shortened meetings was this: the time between meetings is just as important as the meeting itself.

The new gap between meetings wasn’t just useful for getting to the next location and taking a quick bio-break. It gave people time to:

1. Turn action items into tasks (if this didn’t happen in the meeting itself).
2. Reflect on what happened and extract key takeaways.
3. Prepare for their next body of work, whether that was another meeting or deep focus work.

Without these transition periods, people can and do stack up meeting after meeting, showing up exhausted and unprepared. It’s no wonder most meetings feel useless—half the room is still mentally processing the last one.

Is all this really necessary?

Ever since Brigadier General Henry Martyn Robert became frustrated by a Civil War church meeting in Bedford, Massachusetts, we’ve realized that clear guidelines for conducting meetings can significantly improve their effectiveness.

Not every meeting needs to follow Robert’s Rules, but one thing is clear – meetings are expensive.

Consider this: A weekly meeting with five people costs your team over 250 hours of productivity per year—that corresponds to six full work weeks. Imagine what you could do with that time!

If you choose to reevaluate how meetings are conducted in your organization, you will want to determine what changes are non-negotiable rules and what are norms. But as you make that decision, remember that every time you choose to relax your approach, you invite the status quo to return.

Perhaps meetings that don’t need a disciplined approach needn’t exist at all.

The Future of Meetings

We’ve been holding meetings since at least Roman times, so I suspect they are not going anywhere. The problem isn’t that meetings are bad in themselves. The problem is that most teams hold too many of them, involve too many people, and run them too poorly.

Technology can help us solve all these problems. Tools like Slack can replace the need for many meetings. Meeting recordings with AI-generated meeting summaries can be sent to those who don’t need to attend in person. Built-in tools in productivity stacks help you create meaningful agendas and keep relevant notes all in one place.

But all this works only if you are prepared to create meeting rules and norms, and then adhere to them. Otherwise, you will end up right where you started.

Meeting for the sake of meeting.