I've sat in hundreds of meetings that could have been emails. I've been in standups that accomplished nothing, brainstorms that generated no ideas, planning sessions where the real decisions had already been made in hallway conversations. The worst meetings aren't the ones that fail to achieve their stated purpose—they're the ones that have no stated purpose at all.
The cost of bad meetings isn't just the time in the room. It's the context-switching cost of interrupting deep work, the signal it sends that everyone's time isn't equally valuable, and the cultural message that being busy in meetings is the same as being productive. The organizations with the best meeting culture I've seen are ruthless about distinguishing between meetings that create value and meetings that just feel productive.
The First Question to Ask Before Scheduling
Before scheduling any meeting, the question to ask is: what decision needs to be made, or what relationship needs to be built? If you can't answer both questions, you probably don't need a meeting. Information sharing doesn't require synchronous time. Many decisions can be made asynchronously through documents and comments. The meetings that genuinely can't be replaced are the ones where real-time dialogue creates value: complex decisions that require tradeoffs, creative brainstorms that feed off each other's energy, and relationship-building that requires actual human connection.
For every meeting that gets scheduled, there should be a clear decision owner, a clear outcome, and an agenda distributed in advance. Without these three things, the meeting will wander even with the best intentions.
Use the Meeting Evaluator before scheduling your next meeting to make sure the meeting format is the right approach.