Your meetings aren't the problem.
Your follow-through is.

Research shows that most teams lose 25–50% of their meeting time to friction, poor follow-through, and decisions that quietly disappear. The cost is not just wasted time — it is eroded trust.

71% of senior managers say their meetings are unproductive Harvard Business Review
50% of meeting time is considered wasted McKinsey & Company
11% of meetings are considered genuinely productive Bain & Company

To put this in perspective:

A team of 10 people at an average cost to company of R50,000 each represents R500,000 in monthly capacity. If 35% of that time is in meetings, and half of those meetings produce nothing — that is R87,500 every month going to decisions that were never made, actions that were never taken, and trust that is quietly draining away.

And that number doesn't include the hidden costs — the open loops, the rework, the teams waiting on you.
The mirror question: McKinsey research shows that 25–50% of meeting time is lost to friction. Think about the last meeting your team had. Do you know right now whether the decisions made in that meeting were acted on? If the answer is "probably not" — you already know what the problem is.

We built a simple calculator so you can see exactly what this costs your team — in rands, this month.

Calculate Your Meeting Tax Takes 60 seconds  ·  No signup required  ·  Results are immediate

Sources:

• Meeting productivity: Harvard Business Review, "Stop the Meeting Madness" (2017, updated 2024)

• Wasted meeting time: McKinsey Global Institute, "Collaboration and productivity" research

• Meeting effectiveness: Bain & Company, "The Time-Starved Executive" study