Most organizations spend a lot of time scheduling meetings and almost no time preparing for them.
Calendars fill up weeks in advance. Agendas are vague. Everyone shows up on time, opens a laptop, and waits to see where the conversation goes. An hour later, the meeting ends, and the same meeting gets booked again next week.
From the outside, it looks like work is happening. From the inside, it feels strangely unproductive.
This is not a discipline problem. It is a design problem.
Meetings are coordination tools. Their job is not discussion. Their job is alignment. When alignment is missing before the meeting starts, the meeting becomes a substitute for thinking instead of a decision making mechanism.
The most expensive part of a meeting is not the hour on the calendar. It is the collective uncertainty everyone brings into the room. People arrive with different assumptions, different definitions of success, and different interpretations of what the meeting is supposed to accomplish. The first half of the meeting is spent discovering that misalignment exists. The second half is spent trying not to offend anyone while circling toward something that sounds acceptable.
Nothing moves forward because nothing was anchored.
High performing organizations treat meetings differently. They assume that thinking should happen before people gather. The meeting is not where clarity is created. It is where clarity is confirmed. Decisions feel faster not because people rush, but because the real work already happened upstream.
This is a risk issue, not a productivity one.
When organizations rely on meetings to resolve ambiguity, they quietly accumulate decision risk. Important choices get delayed. Accountability blurs. Momentum slows. People mistake conversation for progress and consensus for clarity.
The fix is not fewer meetings. It is better design.
Every meeting should answer one simple question before it starts. What decision will be different because this meeting happened. If that question cannot be answered clearly, the meeting should not exist.
Alignment is cheaper than rework. Preparation is cheaper than correction. And clarity, when done well, feels almost boring. That is usually a sign it is working.
The organizations that scale well do not meet more. They think better before they do.
I am a Canadian insurance and investment professional and the President and Chief Executive Officer of Chazz Financial Inc. and Chazz Capital Assets. I write about leadership, markets, insurance, investing, and decision making, with a focus on how structure and incentives shape outcomes.
I hold a business degree and I am a Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute (FCSI®), a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU®), a Chartered Financial Planner®, a Certified Health Specialist and a Mutual Fund Investment Representative.
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