Virtual Meetings Etiquette — Why Most of Them Shouldn't Exist

Picture this: a problem surfaces. Someone says "We need a meeting with Michael and Sandra." Michael can't make it. Sandra thinks two more people should join. The next available slot is next week. One of them is on holiday. So the week after.

The problem waits. The meeting waits.

Sound familiar?

The meeting problem has a name: it's become too easy.

Before Covid there were meetings. Since Covid there's meeting culture. Teams, Zoom, Google Meet — one click and the calendar fills up. What started as a workaround for remote work has become the default mode of communication in most companies. Not because it works. Because it's so incredibly easy to send an invite.

The result: calendars that look like Tetris. And nobody wins at Tetris.

What goes wrong in most meeting cultures

Recurring series fill the calendar week after week — regardless of whether the topic is still relevant. The invite exists, so the meeting happens.

Too many people are in the room. Often not the right ones. And here's the rule nobody says out loud: the more attendees, the longer the meeting. The longer the meeting, the vaguer the outcome. The vaguer the outcome, the more likely the follow-up meeting.

Next week there'll be a meeting about the meeting from last week.

Michael cancelled — probably because he didn't know what it was about. Nobody left a useful description. Nobody explained what decision needed to be made. Nobody clarified whether his presence was actually necessary.

And the history from the previous meeting? Gone by the time the next one starts.

What a single meeting actually costs

Quick maths:

5 attendees. 1 hour per week. 48 weeks a year.

That's 240 working hours — gone. For one single weekly meeting. With five people.

Now count how many recurring series like that run in your company. Multiply. Sit with that for a moment.

The rules that actually help

No meeting without a clear description. Every attendee needs to know before accepting: what's the goal? What decision is being made? What's expected of me?

No meeting with more than five people — unless it's an update that could have been an email. Then write the email.

No recurring series without an expiry check. Every standing meeting needs a moment of honest questioning: do we still need this?

No meeting for problems one person can solve alone — or that a short async message would fix.

And: the meeting could have been a message. Write the message.

What's really behind the meeting chaos

Meetings feel like work. Like progress. Like collaboration. But meetings are usually the opposite of problem-solving — they are the postponement of problem-solving.

Behind too many meetings there's usually something else entirely: nobody knows exactly who's responsible for what. Decisions aren't made — they're deferred. The problem isn't the calendar tool. The problem is the structures, responsibilities and decision-making processes underneath.

And no meeting etiquette guide fixes that.

If you just need a problem solved — get in touch.

— Robert