In the years since the pandemic, online meetings have become the architecture of modern work. Employees, freelancers, and managers move through days shaped by long chains of video calls on Zoom, Teams, and other platforms. Calendars fill from morning to evening, and a full week often feels measured not by progress but by how many screens someone survives.
This routine sparks a growing question inside organizations. Why do so many meetings exist, and are they accomplishing anything? In many workplaces, the rhythm of constant calls feels less like collaboration and more like a system that repeats itself without intention. People want to know whether the sheer volume signals productivity or exposes a deeper structural problem.
A 2024 survey from Pew Research finds that 44 percent of U.S. workers say poorly run meetings drain their motivation. Atlassian reports that the average mid level employee loses nearly 31 hours each month to gatherings with no clear objective. These numbers reflect not annoyance but a pattern.
For Evan Unger, a leadership strategist who studies how teams operate, these statistics reveal something larger than frustration. They reflect how organizations value time, communication, and decision making. And to Unger, the crisis is not technical. It is cultural.
“A meeting is the most expensive room a company can create,” Unger says. “When people leave that room unclear, the company pays for it twice, once in the meeting and again in the work that follows.”
Unger works with Fortune 500 teams, healthcare systems, government agencies, and fast growing tech firms. He starts each session with a basic question that often goes unasked. What is this meeting supposed to accomplish? He uses a framework called POPRA, which stands for Purpose, Objectives, Process, Roles, Agreements. It forces leaders to define intent before they gather people and fill a room.
He compares the opening minutes of a meeting to the first move of a chess match. “If you squander the opening,” he says, “you spend the rest trying to claw back control.”
Unger’s approach does not revolve around quick hacks or tools. It challenges a deeper habit inside organizations. In a world shaped by hybrid work and constant digital messaging, meetings sometimes function as a substitute for clarity. Teams gather not because they need a meeting but because no one wants to take ownership of a decision. The meeting becomes a performance of alignment rather than the creation of it.
Researchers at MIT Sloan highlight the effect in a study on organizational drag. Teams with heavy meeting loads produce 36 percent fewer strategic decisions per quarter than teams that meet less but structure those sessions with precision.
Executives who bring Unger into their organizations report the same pattern. Once teams redefine the purpose of meetings, morale shifts. A technology firm on the West Coast tracks fewer overtime hours and stronger confidence in project direction after adopting his methods. A government agency in the Midwest sees bottlenecks fall by nearly a third.
For Unger, this connection is direct.
“People do not burn out from work,” he says. “They burn out from the friction around the work, the ambiguity, the rehashing, the sense that everyone is pushing but nothing is actually moving.”
Unger does not call for fewer meetings. He calls for better ones. A meeting should serve as a tool, not an automatic ritual. When used with intention, it creates alignment, cuts delays, and rebuilds trust. When used without intention, it drains energy and weakens collaboration.
As companies move through another year of economic pressure, talent turnover, and digital overwhelm, Unger urges leaders to treat meetings as a strategic function rather than a calendar obligation.
“It is simple,” he says. “If you want to understand the health of an organization, do not read the annual report. Watch how they run a meeting.”