A good system/design meeting can go a long way to producing better code. The problem is that these are so rare. The vast majority of meetings in every company

A good system/design meeting can go a long way to producing better code. The problem is that these are so rare. The vast majority of meetings in every company I've worked at are of the "invite everyone so it turns into a contest to see who can make their point the loudest" variety, and almost always end up with a few people who view it as their chance to be the "star" to a captive audience and thus draw out the meeting as long as they possibly can. Plus, if your programmers are any good, they're probably holding these meetings already without management having to formally call a meeting. I think that's the real problem: "formal" meetings almost always suck. Ad hoc meetings held by people who need communication to finish their job usually make up for themselves in increased productivity.