"What am I even doing here?" — the meeting problem we all recognize

We've all been there. Fifteen minutes to your next meeting, the monthly strategic review one you hate — the same one that everyone hates. In these meetings, there are two modes: either everyone’s talking over one another, René (she owns the meeting) is frantically trying to stay on schedule, or it's dead silent, with people clicking around on their phones and computers.

Sound familiar?

I've been in thousands of meetings over the last nearly 15 years — pitches, workshops, lectures, and countless other formats. But, in a way, it’s the same. The loudest person sets the direction. Quiet team members check out. Someone takes notes that few people ever look at. We leave with vague "next steps" that never quite get done.

But here’s what I realized recently: most meetings aren't broken because people don't care. It’s because we're treating them all the same. We default to the same format every time: one person talks, everyone else listens (or pretends to), and hopefully, something actionable emerges. It’s like using a hammer for every job, whether you're hanging a picture or performing surgery.

When I started How This Works co last year, I realized it was to my benefit (and whoever I was meeting with) to actively spell out the purpose of every encounter. Was this a sales pitch? A kick off? A workshop debrief? Or something else entirely? So, I started approaching meetings as I approach product design. I asked: Who's the user? (Read: your team or my client.) What job are they trying to accomplish? (Brainstorming, making a decision, aligning on next steps.) And what's getting in their way? I’d sign post it verbally and away we’d go.

When you look at meetings through this lens, the problems become obvious. We're asking people to absorb a ton of information, generate ideas, make decisions, and coordinate follow-ups — all in the same 60-minute block, often after they've run from a series of other back-to-back meetings, context-switching the whole way.

Cognitive research backs this up. Nelson Cowan's work shows we can really only hold 3-4 chunks of information at once, yet we overpack meetings — we’ll talk about that in the next article. Add in context switching, decision fatigue, and authority bias, and it's no wonder people leave feeling confused and drained.

So, I started small — the aforementioned stated purpose. And then instead of jumping straight into discussion, we might spend five minutes writing down individual thoughts first (working alone together). This way, instead of one person frantically taking notes, everyone was their own secretary. Many fewer bottlenecks. And instead of trying to solve everything at once, we'd tackle one decision at a time.

The results began to show up. That wallflower engineer in the first three meetings who seemed like they were completely checked out? He started contributing ideas we'd never heard before. Not because he suddenly cared more, but because the structure finally gave him space to think.

This isn’t perfect. Being aware and upfront doesn’t make all meetings instantly better. But meetings also aren't inherently bad — they're just poorly designed and badly managed for how people actually think and collaborate.

What would change if we started treating meetings like any other design problem? With users (read: your team) who have real constraints and real needs?

Until next time,

Skipper Chong Warson

_{Making product strategy and design work more human — and impactful}

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