> meetings should be treated as dignified work in and of themselves, and treated with appropriate gravity and respect so they can be as useful as possible This

> meetings should be treated as dignified work in and of themselves, and treated with appropriate gravity and respect so they can be as useful as possible This is completely backwards. If meeting want to be treated as dignified work, and have "gravity and respect", then they need to act that way. You're not going to get dignity and respect from the "ICs" all the while bullshitting during the meeting. > it's in those meetings where, done well, learning and group knowledge creation occurs. It really isn't. Not in the meetings that people complain about when they complain about meetings. I've sat through any number of meetings, watching the bullshit roll by: I'm forced to pick my battles here: I'd be far too squeaky of a wheel if I attempted to correct the whole lot, and managers hate being upstaged. Even where I must (because bad understanding of the problem at hand is cascading towards a bad solution, and JIRA tasks that make 0 sense to anyone who'd have to complete them) — even where I must, often I get talked over, or flat out ignored, even in the most bizarre of ways: I'll get an acknowledgement of "oh, the detail you've pointed out is correct" but … then management will want to go right back to making the same bad decision spawned from the original — and allegedly acknowledged as — incorrect information. No knowledge creation or learning is occurring, here. None of my meetings have agendas. Slides are not shared, even getting slides shared after the fact is like pulling teeth. Heck, sometimes the invite is sent with mere minutes of notice. I have far better luck moving the needle with what I've taken to calling "working sessions": often pairing with a singular other person, and walking them directly through tasks towards a goal that we want to accomplish, often with screens shared. But these are not the sorts of things that people rail against, IMO.