The Simplest Framework to Get Projects Done Faster and Stop Wasting People’s Time
- Neil Pretty
- Mar 17
- 8 min read
I like the saying “The problem is the way".
Wasting your life in meetings doesn't have to be a fate you are doomed to accept.
As a leader or as part of a team your life can feel like a constant barrage of meetings. Recent research shows that this isn’t an isolated feeling or scenario. There is a clear need to improve collaboration in the workplace.
Just to highlight how much of an issue this is I did a little digging.
A study by Atlassian revealed that 72% of meetings are deemed ineffective, often lacking clear agendas and balanced participation. This inefficiency leads to 78% of employees feeling overwhelmed by excessive meetings, hindering their ability to complete essential tasks. Furthermore, a survey highlighted that 65% of senior managers believe meetings prevent them from finishing their work, while 71% consider them unproductive and inefficient.
This is a colossal waste of time.
What you need is a clear way to move forward that is both helpful for you, creates shared language for your team and - more frankly - helps you cut the BS from your day.
The challenge is three fold - Awareness, Willingness and Skill.
Awareness - your meetings could always be better - Facilitation is a core skill for modern leaders and chances are your meetings aren’t as good as you think they are.
Willingness to do something different starts with the humility to accept that “the way you’ve always done it” might just be worth your effort to change. I like to call this “the ability to be wrong without shaming yourself”.
Skill - That's what we are going to talk about in this article. You need a simple way to assess and adapt your meetings so they get better and you do too.
This can be a big win for you and your teams. Research published in the MIT Sloan Management Review found that reducing meetings by 40% led to a 71% increase in employee productivity and a 52% boost in job satisfaction.
Additionally, companies like Atlassian have observed that 72% of meetings lack effectiveness, prompting a reevaluation of their meeting cultures. So, If you want more productivity for less effort - read on.
You have probably been in a meeting and said “That could have been an email”. Or sat through a discussion that dragged on with no real outcome?
I know I have…
Step 1:
Answer this: What is the problem we are trying to solve together?
It could be anything:
Align on the week ahead and coordinate various projects.
Determine our export strategy to x,y,z market
How to navigate the change in team structure we’ve been asked to implement.
How are we going to reduce costs
What are the learning goals for our new Sr. Leader development program
Group coaching and sales strategy to improve sales calls
What is the communication strategy for our back to office policy
What is our back to office policy?
Weekly sales update and information sharing
A couple of these might be hard to read for some of you. But, this is the critical prerequisite for what might be the simplest way to get more from your meetings - and simply have less of them.
This question is crucial. If people aren’t clear on why they’re in the room or what the goal is, no amount of structure will save the meeting. The clearer you are about the challenge—and why each person needs to be there—the more effective the process will be.
If it’s clear - Great
If it’s not clear do one of the following:
Now identifying “what are we trying to accomplish together” is your new goal
It should probably be an email.
Step 2: Explore The 3 Cs: Cadence, Clarity, and Calibration
As a leader you need to cut through the noise, focus on what matters, and get things done.
#1 Cadence: Find the Right Frequency for Progress
Cadence is about how often you need to meet to maintain momentum without wasting time and solve the problem you have.
Too often, teams default to arbitrary schedules—weekly check-ins, monthly strategy meetings—without questioning whether that rhythm actually serves the work.
For example:
• A sales team might need a daily check-in to tackle immediate roadblocks but only a biweekly meeting for deeper gap analysis and training.
• A change management team might need less frequent, but longer working sessions to ensure they’re solving real problems rather than just giving updates.
The goal is to match meeting frequency to the speed of the challenge—often enough to keep momentum, and allow for the necessary work to happen between meeting but not so often that meetings become redundant.
The Common Mistake: Too Many Updates, Not Enough Work
Most teams overspend time on status updates and underspend time on deep work. If your meetings feel like a collection of updates rather than actual decision-making or problem-solving, your cadence is off.
One of the tricks I have found is to have “no meeting”, “no comms” or “deep work” blocks in your calendars for your entire team. One or two 3 hour blocks where people can focus on work will work wonders. You just need to do it for long enough to see how it helps - try 4 weeks.
#2 Consideration: Depth with Purpose
Consideration is about depth and breadth. How deep you need to go in your meeting to make it worth your time. To do this effectively you also need to consider what perspectives and people you need in each meeting as well. A 15 minute meeting could take the place of several collective hours of emails. A meeting that is only 60 minutes might just not get to the heart of the matter.
While working with a client in Peru we were in a meeting with 7 “stakeholders”. The meeting was an hour and our goal was to understand the business challenges of the client and make some key decisions about our strategy moving forward. Some things had changed recently and we were at a natural waypoint in our project. We knew who the CPO was and most of the conversation was with her and the head of L&D. But, Who were the other 5? I asked later who they were and why they were there and the answer came quickly “they are there so they aren’t offended that they were invited. They offered no perspective - just the odd question that felt out of place and distracting. 5+ hours of waste and our progress was hindered along the way. Our next meeting only included 2 people form our team and 2 from theirs and we had made final decisions within 25 minutes.
When we complete psychological safety development sessions for teams for example - an information session (which is borderline a waste of time as it is) can be an hour. But - if a team is looking to improve their work practices and understand their dynamics - an hour will get you nowhere.
Different meetings serve different purposes, and the right level of depth ensures effectiveness.
Let’s take a sales/marketing team example:
• Daily stand-ups can be a light-touch—a quick pulse check, no deep dives. (Maybe an email?)
• Biweekly training sessions can be more intense, reviewing call recordings and dissecting what’s working and what’s not, understanding how clients are responding to new marketing material.
• Monthly strategy meetings should go even deeper, analyzing market trends and adjusting tactics.
For a different kind of team—say, a crisis response team—the depth could be flipped: daily meetings might require deep, immediate problem-solving, while monthly meetings focus on learning from past events.
How Long Should a Meeting Be?
Most leaders struggle with this balance:
• 30 minutes isn’t enough for a complex, 8-person discussion to surface diverse perspectives and generate strong decisions.
• 4-hours can be too long for most topics but can be essential to tackle complex issues that require more systems thinking or slower contemplation (strategy or culture initiatives for example.)
• A well-facilitated 2-hour session can often achieve more than five or 6 mediocre 30 minute meetings combined.
The other thing you should consider is Why each person is invited. If you can’t articulate teh reason why they are included you should be able to articulate to them directly why they weren’t included - Inclusion doesn’t mean “invite everyone all the time” there is nothing that will undermine a feeling of inclusion faster than being invited to several meetings but never being included. If you want them there to observe so they can learn - invest time in capturing the learning.
A person's purpose in the meeting should be clear so they can participate fully to that capacity
Otherwise - Give people the respect of not wasting their time and the gift of a clear schedule.
Time should be spent on what matters. So don’t waste it by letting it drag with no focus or cutting it too short.
#3 Calibration: Adjust and Improve Over Time
The final C, Calibration, ensures that teams don’t just work hard—they work smarter over time. This is where you step back and review your process to refine it.
You need to ask:
Is our process helping us solve our problem?
How well are our meetings working?
Are we wasting time anywhere?
Are we making decisions efficiently?
Do we need the same or different people in the room?
Are we improving as a team?
Most teams never do this, and as a result, inefficiencies persist for years. But high-performing teams schedule regular calibrations (monthly, quarterly, or at key milestones) to tweak and improve their process.
This should match your cadence and considerations - more frequent meetings need more frequent reflection. Less frequent and more in depth meetings might need “Calibration” added to the agenda.
The Real-World Impact of Calibration
I once worked with a team that ran weekly 90-minute leadership meetings. They believed these were productive—until they took a hard look at what was actually happening. More than 60% of the time was spent on status updates, while deep problem-solving and decision making was always rushed.
After a structured calibration, they redesigned their approach:
• Moved to a biweekly cadence
• Shifted updates to a shared document
• Devoted meetings exclusively to decision-making and problem-solving
You can probably guess the outcome - it was great. But the first outcome was the best - people were relieved. They collectively agreed that their process sucked but nobody was willing to make a step into the unknown and try something different without a framework to help the conversation move forward.
This was all following a 90-minute meeting between me and the team leader - some coaching, some strategy, some planning – Done. The team continued to get better throughout the year.
When you build calibration into your process, you are investing in learning – This is the most critical unifying aspect of high-performance teams.
Why This Works Even If You Struggle to Run Good Meetings
One of the biggest barriers to effective teamwork isn’t just bad meetings—it’s the challenge of leading them confidently. If you’ve ever struggled to facilitate a meeting that feels productive and engaging, the 3Cs can make it easier.
This is about more than just a clear agenda, it’s about creating a clear path to problem solving and meaningful collaboration. If you eliminate vague discussions and ensure every meeting has a clear purpose they can contribute more easily.
It also reduces wasted time, so you and your team focus only on what truly matters. Most importantly, it shifts your role from trying to control every conversation to guiding the process effectively, making discussions more dynamic and results-driven.
It’s a simple, repeatable approach that transforms meetings from a drain on time to a driver of real progress.
Keep it easy
1. Define the challenge: What are we working on? Why is each person here?
2. Set the right Cadence: How often do we really need to meet to solve our problem?
3. Establish Considerations: How deep do we need to go in each type of meeting?Who should be here?
4. Schedule Calibration: When will we review and refine our process?
If you do this, you’ll cut wasted time, make faster progress, and actually enjoy meetings for once.
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