We’ve all been there—sitting through yet another meeting that could’ve been an email, or watching the clock tick past the end time while no one calls it. Meetings are supposed to move work forward. Too often, they do the opposite.
I once sat through an entire week of 8-hour “planning” sessions. We were doing SAFe iteration planning—badly. There were over 80 people in the meeting. Fewer than six ever spoke. That’s not hyperbole. And it turns out, that experience isn’t unusual. According to Atlassian’s research across 5,000 knowledge workers, 72% of meetings are considered ineffective — and 78% of participants say they’re required to attend so many that it hampers their ability to do their actual work. Half of them regularly work overtime just to compensate.
The cost isn’t abstract either. Employees spend an average of 31 hours per month in meetings, and roughly half that time is wasted — adding up to an estimated $399 billion annually in lost productivity in the U.S. alone.
That meeting is what pushed me to write the Meeting Etiquette Guide—a document I now treat as a living framework in our organization. The productivity lost in events like this is hard to calculate—but it’s massive no matter how you run the numbers. And while there’s value in transparency and sharing plans, this is not the way.
As an engineering manager, my calendar is often stacked wall-to-wall with meetings. That’s exactly why we need conventions that respect time, focus, and contribution. Without those, meetings become just another drag on the system.
The Meeting Smell Test
Ask yourself these questions before you send that invite:
| Question | If No, then… |
|---|---|
| Do I have a clear purpose or outcome for the meeting? | Don’t meet. Write it down and share instead. |
| Do I need input or decisions from multiple people? | Consider async collaboration (email, chat, doc comments). |
| Can this be handled with a quick update or FYI? | Use email or a post—not people’s calendars. |
| Will more than 50% of attendees speak or contribute? | Rethink the invite list—or cancel. |
| Is this blocked by something else being done first? | Wait. Then schedule only if it’s still needed. |
Tip: If the answer to any of these is “no”, don’t make a meeting. Make a plan.
What’s Worked for Me
The single most effective thing I’ve done is create a Meeting Guidance document and get leadership to sign off on it. Not as a policy artifact that lives in a wiki somewhere — but as a living framework the team actually references. That distinction matters. A document without ownership is just good intentions in markdown.
And I mean sign it — literally. When leaders put their name on a document, it stops being a suggestion. It becomes a statement of organizational values. In my experience, that single act does more for adoption than any amount of communication or follow-up. Leaders who’ve signed it don’t undermine it — they defend it.
Getting that buy-in isn’t just political cover either. It changes the dynamic in the room. When everyone knows the conventions have been endorsed at the top, enforcing them stops feeling like pushback and starts feeling like professionalism.
The second thing that’s worked: separating attendance from awareness. Most meetings are bloated because organizers conflate the two. If someone needs to know what was decided, they don’t need a seat at the table — they need a summary afterward. Assign someone to capture decisions, action items, and open questions. Send it out. Done.
The rest — tracking acknowledgment, gathering sign-offs — is rarely necessary if you’ve done the first two things well. When expectations are clear, tools are provided, and accountability is enforced, the culture tends to follow.
Final Thought
Change like this doesn’t require a revolution. But it does require someone willing to speak up — and a plan to follow through.
That’s harder than it sounds. Most teams have learned to live with meetings they hate. It becomes background noise — frustrating, but familiar. Challenging it means naming something everyone else has quietly accepted, and that takes a particular kind of courage.
But here’s what I’ve seen: once someone speaks up with a plan instead of just a complaint, things move. People were waiting for permission to care about their time again.
Be that person.
📄 Ready to Steal My Template?
Check out the Meeting Etiquette Guide—customizable for your org, your culture, and your team.
Your time (and your team’s) is too valuable to waste pretending a bad meeting is better than none.
🤝 Need Help?
If you want help implementing this in your organization — or making the case to leadership — I’d love to connect. I’ve navigated this in real engineering teams and can help you build something that actually sticks. Reach out via my LinkedIn profile to start a conversation.
Leave a Reply