The Meeting Problem

$375 Billion in Wasted Meetings

Here’s what the research says about how your organization spends its meeting time: $375 billion per year wasted on unproductive meetings in the US alone. 31 hours per month — nearly four full workdays — spent in meetings that don’t achieve their objectives. 71% of senior managers say their meetings are unproductive and inefficient.

And the problem is getting worse. Time spent in unproductive meetings has doubled since 2019, driven by remote work, video call fatigue, and the reflexive habit of “let’s schedule a meeting” for every discussion.

But here’s the opportunity: the problem isn’t meetings themselves. Meetings are where decisions get made, relationships get built, and alignment gets created. The problem is how most meetings are run — without structure, without facilitation, and without systems to capture what was decided.

What You’ll Learn

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

Identify which meetings should exist and which should be replaced with async alternatives
Design agendas that keep meetings focused, time-boxed, and outcome-oriented
Facilitate discussions that engage every participant, manage conflict, and drive decisions
Use AI meeting assistants to automate notes, action items, and follow-up tracking
Measure meeting effectiveness with data and continuously improve
Build a complete meeting facilitation system for your team

How This Course Works

Each lesson builds a different aspect of meeting mastery:

Lesson	What You’ll Build
Lesson 2	Your meeting audit — which to keep, cut, or convert
Lesson 3	Agenda templates that drive productive meetings
Lesson 4	Core facilitation techniques for any meeting type
Lesson 5	AI meeting assistant workflows for notes and action items
Lesson 6	Strategies for difficult meetings and remote facilitation
Lesson 7	A meeting effectiveness dashboard
Lesson 8	Your complete meeting facilitation system

✅ Quick Check: What is the average annual cost of meeting time per employee? Approximately $29,000 per employee per year, not including preparation time, context-switching costs, or the opportunity cost of what people could have been doing instead. For a 100-person company, that’s $2.9 million — making meeting effectiveness one of the highest-leverage productivity improvements any organization can make.

The Three Meeting Problems

Most meeting dysfunction falls into three categories, each requiring a different solution:

Problem	Symptom	Solution
Wrong meetings exist	Status update meetings, FYI meetings, meetings with no clear purpose	Meeting audit → eliminate or convert to async
Right meetings run poorly	No agenda, discussions go off track, no clear outcomes	Facilitation skills → structure, manage, and conclude
Decisions don’t stick	Action items not documented, no follow-up, same topics re-discussed	AI + systems → capture, track, and close the loop

This course addresses all three — starting with identifying which meetings should exist, then making them excellent, then ensuring their outcomes are captured and executed.

Key Takeaways

Unproductive meetings cost US businesses $375 billion annually, with the average employee spending 31 hours per month (4 full workdays) in meetings that don’t achieve objectives
The problem has doubled since 2019, driven by remote work and the habit of defaulting to meetings for every discussion
44% of meeting action items never get completed — not because people are lazy, but because items are verbal, vague, and untracked
The solution isn’t eliminating meetings but fixing three problems: wrong meetings exist, right meetings run poorly, and decisions don’t stick
AI meeting tools solve the documentation and tracking gap, freeing facilitators to focus on leading productive discussions

Up Next: You’ll audit your meetings — categorizing each one as “keep,” “convert to async,” or “eliminate” — and learn the decision framework for when a meeting is actually necessary.