As one of the most visible manifestations of your company culture, meetings are worth fixing. Here is how.
Almost everyone hates meetings. Yet, they contain some of the clearest signals about your company’s culture.
“I always say that what happens in meetings defines culture,” says Joe Lalley, consultant and author of the book “Question to Learn.” His advice to leaders: if you want to fix your culture, start with meetings.
Visibility is part of why meetings become so dysfunctional.
“Most work within our organization is invisible,” says Rebecca Hinds, bestselling author of “Your Best Meeting Ever.” “It's very hard to see someone thinking deeply through a problem or rewriting the email for the 10th time.”
Meetings, by contrast, are one of the most visible forms of work, which turns them into a status symbol. “There are a few things that say we're more important in our organization than being double or even triple booked for a meeting,” Hinds says.
What’s the perfect length for a meeting?
Ask great leaders at high-trust workplaces, and you will hear a shared preference for shorter, more focused meetings.
Anthony Capuano, CEO of Marriott International, says “less than an hour” and “focused on no more than two topics.”
Chris Nasetta, CEO of Hilton, and Brian Doubles, CEO of Synchrony, both favor 30 minutes or less. Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, needs just 10 minutes.
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The problem for people who are not the CEO is the implied social contract of a meeting.
“The words are socially loaded,” Hinds says. “We accept the meeting invite; we reject it. It's not just ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
That makes managing your calendar, while also building relationships within colleagues, complicated.
“It starts to feel less like we're canceling the meeting and more like we're canceling the person behind the meeting,” Hinds says. That’s especially true in organizations without clear norms or shared goals.
5 tips for a healthier meeting culture
Hinds is a proponent of “Meeting Doomsdays,” where companies radically purge every recurring meeting and slowly reintroduce them with care.
It’s a dramatic intervention that’s worked for companies like Dropbox, but it’s not the only way to address dysfunctional meetings. Here are the essentials every organization needs:
1. Create a safe way to flag bad meetings
You need visibility into the meetings that aren’t performing. Hinds recommends launching an anonymous channel or email inbox where employees can submit meetings for review.
Beware of bias — meeting organizers often optimize the meeting for themselves, not attendees.
3. Measure meetings with objective metrics
A simple poll of attendees about whether they got value out of a meeting is a great place to start, Hinds says. But new sources of data are even more objective.
Do we have a certain subset of meetings where there's a clear imbalance of airtime?” Hinds asks. “Often that's an indication that the meeting is actually more like a status update or a briefing.”
Analytics from email and calendar apps can show how often employees are double booked, raising the question of whether it’s for performative or logistical reasons.
3. Define what deserves a meeting
What’s the purpose of a meeting at your organization? Challenging norms can identify misused time.
“Try skipping meeting introductions,” suggests Lalley. Instead of going around the room with names and titles, jump right into discussion to avoid silencing participants with less senior roles.
It’s human nature to spend too much time on the first agenda item, and never get to the last item. Meetings also often spend all the discussion time on the most trivial topic on the agenda, and rush through items that are more important, but potentially fraught.
Hinds offers a fix she calls the rule of halves. “Look at the key dimensions of your meeting structure in terms of the length, the attendees, the agenda and the frequency, and try to cut one or two in half,” she says.
4. Build guardrails for AI use in meetings
“By and large AI has not improved how we meet,” Hinds says. Instead, it feeds lazy habits, like sending an AI notetaker to a meeting instead of fixing poor meeting hygiene.
AI can play three roles in a meeting, Hinds says: Automate, advise, and participate. Teams have the most success when AI automates tasks like notetaking, scheduling, and follow-ups. AI is also successful at helping advise meeting organizers with data like speaking time.
But using AI to participate for you? That doesn’t address the underlying meeting debt.
“Optimize for the team, not the individual,” Hinds says. Your notetaker might save you time, but is it helping your team be more productive?
5. Address the status divide for remote/hybrid teams
When some people are in the room and others are remote, there are natural fault lines. Great workplaces close them with intentional practices:
- Invite remote participants to speak first
- Pair remote participants with a buddy responsible for ensuring their voice is heard
- Don’t schedule meetings at lunchtime when in-person participants gain an advantage from the pre- or post-meeting chatter
How are you trying to have better meetings in 2026?
