Camel is a Horse designed by a committee

I hate meetings - long ones; no defined agenda; with few participants who come into work just for chairing or attending meetings. So any research essay that demerits meetings is a cup of lassi for me!

Slow Leadership came out with a strong post that can summarized that more meetings mean less trust.

In the list of activities that waste time and cause worthless frustration at work, meetings rank very near the top. Not only do many meetings fail to result in any clear decision, leaving you wondering why people came together in the first place, others have no discernible purpose at all. Worst of all, holding too many meetings passes a strong message: the boss doesn’t trust the team to function without his or her constant interference; and colleagues don’t trust one another not to undermine them in some way.

I would vote with the article more than one hundred percent. Most meetings dont result in any decision making - all people do is pass the buck. If one takes a bold decision, then he/she shows a dominating attitude; decision by consensus happens in meeting post lunch sessions. Most of the time the only decision taken is when to meet next to discuss the issue.

The status meetings are by far the worst - they are like reading all your spam mails, junk folder mails, bulk mails and forcing others to read them too. In addition to pervasive distrust that the author talks about, I believe that CYA plays a key factor in meetings.

The other funny thing is to keep saying "Lets take this offline". If you were to take it offline,
then why call a meeting in the first place?

As techies say, No-Laptop meetings makes sense. No meetings make more sense!