Every leader knows what a bad meeting feels like. The energy drops. People disengage. The conversation wanders. And by the end, nothing is decided, everyone is more confused than when they started, and the only clear outcome is the collective wish that the meeting had been cancelled.
This is what Patrick Lencioni calls “Death by Meeting.”
And after years of working with teams, I’ve learned a blunt truth: the problem isn’t meetings themselves—it’s your meetings. The ones without purpose, without structure, and without a strong hand guiding them.
Meetings are where decisions are made, issues are solved, priorities are reinforced, and teams stay aligned. If those conversations are sloppy, slow, or unfocused, the entire organization feels the impact.
Most meeting dysfunction comes down to three things:
- No Purpose
If a meeting doesn’t have a clear purpose, the void gets filled with noise—updates nobody needs, tangents that go nowhere, and discussions rooted more in opinion than in what the business actually requires. Purpose creates boundaries and signals what belongs and what doesn’t. - No Structure
High-performing teams use a consistent agenda every time. Predictability isn’t rigidity—it’s efficiency. A good structure eliminates confusion, reduces rambling, and makes it easy to move quickly.
A strong weekly meeting cadence typically includes:
- A quick opening to set the tone
- A review of key metrics
- A check-in on last week’s commitments
- A touchpoint on major goals or priorities
- Focused time to identify and solve the most important issues
- Ending with clear commitments and communication to cascade across the team
This rhythm keeps the team grounded in data, focused on priorities, and oriented toward action rather than stories.
- No Facilitation
Even the best structure collapses without someone actively steering. Facilitation isn’t “running the meeting”—it’s leading it. A good facilitator keeps the group on track, watches the clock, shuts down rabbit holes, invites quieter voices into the conversation, and pushes the team toward real decisions and real accountability.
When I work with companies on improving meeting quality, I emphasize one thing:
Fix your meetings and you eliminate half of your organization’s frustration—almost overnight.
Bad meetings drain energy and create confusion.
Good meetings create clarity, momentum, and alignment.
And the formula for good meetings is surprisingly simple:
- Start and end on time
- Follow the same agenda every week
- Use data to anchor the conversation
- Spend the bulk of the meeting solving real issues
- End with commitments that are actually kept
If your meetings feel painful, bloated, repetitive, or pointless, that’s not an unfortunate fact of life. That’s a design flaw.
And design flaws can be fixed.
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