I don't think the issue is always that we have too many meetings. Sometimes we do. Obviously. But the bigger issue is that too many meetings start without enough thought about what they are actually for.
People arrive half-prepared, half-listening and half in another document. Then everyone spends the first ten minutes finding the context that probably should have been shared beforehand.
That's not collaboration. That's expensive catching up.
The best meetings have already started
A good meeting starts when someone decides why it needs to exist.
Is this for a decision?
Is it for alignment?
Is it for feedback?
Is it for sharing information?
Those are different things, and they need different formats. The problem is we often use the same meeting shape for all of them.
If people need to make a decision, they need the context before the meeting. If people need to give feedback, they need enough time to think. If something is just an update, maybe it didn't need a meeting at all.
Attention is part of the meeting
This is the bit people don't like saying out loud.
Being in the meeting is not the same as being present.
If you're replying to Slack, checking emails or quietly editing another deck, you're not really in the conversation. You're just occupying a square on the screen.
I get why it happens. Everyone is busy. Most people are trying to keep too many things moving at once. But multitasking in meetings usually creates more meetings, because nobody quite heard the thing that mattered.
Where my thinking is today
I don't think meetings are the enemy.
Vague meetings are.
A good meeting should reduce confusion, create alignment or move a decision forward. If it doesn't do one of those things, it's probably just a group of people sharing the same calendar problem.