Our Meeting Manifesto: Reclaiming the Power of Gathering at Work
Stephanie walked into the conference room with a mix of hope and skepticism. The calendar invite had been clear: a working session to draft a new mission statement for the division. Fifteen people sat around the table, laptops open, coffees in hand, waiting.
The facilitator began well enough, naming the goal out loud. But within minutes the room descended into wordsmithing. One person lobbed phrases across the table, another circled back to a half-formed idea, two colleagues (politely?) interrupted each other. The rest sat silently, waiting for inspiration to strike. The conversation stalled, then sputtered, then repeated. Stephanie doodled in her notebook.
By the end of the hour, guess what? There was no mission statement. Just a placeholder on the calendar for a follow-up meeting where the same circus would unfold. Two more sessions later, the group finally had a result, but at the cost of more than an entire workweek of manhours.
Stephanie left each meeting frustrated, disappointed not in her colleagues, but in the waste. The team cared deeply. What they lacked was structure and design.
And that is the problem. Not just with this meeting, but with meetings everywhere.
Why Meetings Matter More Than We Admit
Meetings are the most expensive way organizations spend time together. Executives now spend 23 hours a week in meetings, up from 10 hours in the 1960s. Multiply that across teams and the investment is staggering. But the ugly truth is people don’t actually think meetings are all that valuable. In the U.S. alone, unproductive meetings cost an estimated $37 billion annually.
Yet when a meeting fails, few blame leadership or facilitation. Instead, people shrug and say things like, “We have so much to cover, we’re just going to need another meeting” or “That one guy talked too much. I wish he could rein it in.”
Facilitation is invisible when it works and ignored when it doesn’t. Which means leaders rarely improve at it, and teams keep bleeding time, energy, and morale.
But a well-run meeting is one of the highest-leverage spends a leader can make. Research shows that organizations investing in meeting design and facilitation see 17% higher team productivity and 24% stronger performance ratings. One well-facilitated strategy session can save months of misalignment, recouping its cost in weeks, if not days.
The Meeting Manifesto
We believe meetings can and should be the most powerful lever a leader has to both motivate and engage their people and make sure the organization’s work gets done. Meetings can be the lifeblood of an organizational culture, and are key to innovation and cross-functional collaboration. Here are our declarations:
1. Meetings shape what your people know, feel, and do.
A meeting is not just about exchanging information. It is about creating clarity, sparking connection, and driving commitment. The true success of a meeting should be measured in what people do afterwards. After all… that pretty slide deck? the alignment you came to? None if it matters if the stories people tell after the meeting communicate something different. Meetings should be designed with the outcomes in mind from the beginning, and measured by how well those outcomes are achieved.
2. Great facilitation is an underappreciated skill of leadership.
Facilitation is more than managing airtime. It’s anticipating dynamics, shaping flow, and guiding a group toward alignment and action. The best facilitation begins before anyone walks in the room, and carries on long after the meeting ends. If done right, voices are heard, buy-in is built, alignment is engineered, and execution happens. The ability to run a meeting well is the ability to lead, full stop.
3. Meetings deserve intentional design, not defaults.
Status updates, decision-making, brainstorming, and team building all are valid reasons for a meeting. The problem is that most meetings are designed by habit, shaped by meeting type and not meeting purpose. Copy/paste invites and recycled agendas don’t get results. Intentional design does. Meetings should be designed to encourage the necessary conversations with the right people.
Missed Opportunities
Too many leaders miss the chance to transform even the most routine gatherings. Three stories that highlight common examples stand out:
One-on-Ones Transformed
Jennifer, a coaching client, told Stephanie her one-on-ones were rote, box-checking rituals: “How are you?” “Any blockers?” “How can I help?” Each question would typically get a short, non-answer. “It’s like pulling teeth!” Jennifer complained.
She and Stephanie took a minute to redesign the structure of her one-on-ones. They put together some intentional framing, deeper questions, and even a short pre-meeting worksheet for her team members to fill out. Overnight, Jennifer said the meetings transformed into a space of mutual value. Within just a few weeks, she understood her team members and their challenges much more deeply, and was able to advocate on their behalf more effectively. Just by tweaking the structure of a 30-min monthly meeting, Jennifer became a more effective team lead.
Weekly Status Update Reimagined
A new manager was assigned to Agatha’s team, and one of the first things to change was the format of the Monday Standup. Rather than going around the group and letting each person “give an update,” the manager narrowly defined what an update was: not more than 2 mins, featuring 1 win from last week and 1 ask to the group for this week. The manager literally used a stopwatch to hold people accountable. Yes, it was intense, and it took the team some getting used to, but meetings took half the time and were 10x more valuable than before. It wasn't perfect, but it was intentional.
Last-Minute “Report Out” Transforms into Thoughtful Team Building
A client came to Kara and Stephanie with a challenge: they hoped to leverage an already-scheduled, 4-hour, in-person gathering for everyone who had recently been assigned to a newly launching role. They knew there would be a lot of questions about the duties and responsibilities of the role, but they weren’t going to have a lot of answers yet. Rather than throwing together a last-minute slide deck presentation, we brainstormed a different approach: They would spend a short amount of time getting an update on the change and timing, and then have a candid, Q&A conversation with a panel of leaders. Finally, the group would spend time on a team-building activity to help them get to know each other and decide who they wanted to be as a team. There’s always an opportunity to design your meeting time productively.
Monthly (Now-Virtual) Networking Event Finds New Life
Jefferson came to Stephanie because his monthly gathering of leaders from environmental non-profits across the Great Lakes Region was losing oomph. COVID had forced everyone to go virtual, and no one saw the point of coming anymore. How could they possibly network now that there wasn’t time for small talk? Together, Stephanie and Jefferson redesigned the meeting. Rather than having one person present for 45 minutes “about their work,” Jefferson invited 3 different people to each present for only 5 min on a specific problem they needed help solving. Then the group was asked to join one of three breakout rooms where they would be invited to share resources and advice with the presenter they felt most called to help. After only 2 sessions in this new format, attendance skyrocketed and Jefferson kept hearing how useful these gatherings had become to members.
The lesson: even ordinary meetings can become high-impact when designed with purpose.
What’s at Stake
Poorly designed meetings don’t just waste time. They silence voices, stall innovation, and erode culture. Research estimates that mismanaged meetings may cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually, not only in direct lost hours but in disengagement and missed opportunities.
But the reverse is also true. Well-designed meetings build momentum, sharpen strategy, and accelerate alignment. They protect your team’s energy and amplify your leadership.
The way you fix your meeting problem is by fixing your leaders. Leaders who treat meetings as their highest-leverage tool (and cultivate their facilitation skills) create rooms where strategy lives, buy-in builds, and action begins.
Stop seeing meetings as calendar burdens. Start seeing them as your most underleveraged leadership opportunity.