Looking for you summer 2026 beach read? Look no further than John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash 1929. Imagine digging your toes in the sand as you relive one of the greatest financial calamities in history. Fun, no? Actually, it is, and Galbraith is a lively writer. I picked it up to better understand the financial excesses and human behavior that led to the crash, hoping there might be lessons for today’s investors – including me, and probably you.
Unexpectedly, one of the most insightful passages has nothing to do with investing. It’s about everyone’s favorite topic: meetings. Describing the aftermath of the crash, Galbraith notes that President Hoover convened numerous meetings to try and reassure what was a very nervous public. But then he makes an observation that could have been written about many organizations today. He describes “the meeting which is called not to do business but to do no business.” That phrase stopped me.
Galbraith wasn’t criticizing meetings in general. He readily acknowledges that many are necessary. There will always be a need for people to exchange information, persuade one another, make decisions, and find an excuse to have lunch catered from that new Mexican restaurant without paying for it yourself. His target was something else entirely. He argued that some meetings exist primarily to create the false impression that something important is happening. As he put it, “such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.”
I suspect most of us have attended more than a few of those gatherings. Here are some of the charming characteristics they share:
- A meeting is called with only the vaguest objective
- There is no meaningful agenda to follow
- Ideas are exchanged. Opinions are shared. Side discussions flourish. The conversation gradually drifts further and further from whatever prompted the meeting in the first place.
Eventually, the hour (if you’re lucky) expires, everyone leaves feeling busy, but very little of substance changes. No decisions have been made, no actions for follow through assigned, and certainly no accountability has been established. Yet somehow – miraculously – everyone feels as though progress has occurred simply because intelligent people spent an hour talking together.
Over the years, I’ve facilitated hundreds of executive meetings and leadership workshops. Most were highly productive because they had a clear purpose and a disciplined structure. But I’ve also seen meetings that seemed to exist largely because having a meeting was viewed as the appropriate response. In other words…
The meeting itself became the deliverable.
Galbraith makes another observation elsewhere in the book that I think quietly explains why these meetings can be so frustrating. He writes: “Wisdom itself is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with who asserts it, and the manner of that assertion.” Think of how often that dynamic appears in organizations. It’s often the loudest voice in the room that carries the discussion, and frequently those words emanate from the lips of the most senior person. Meanwhile, quieter perspectives, or simply better ideas, never receive the attention they deserve.
After sitting through my fair share of duds (and no I didn’t arrange them, I was invited) I’ve often thought that organizations dramatically underestimate the cost of ineffective meetings. It’s not just the salaries of the people sitting around the table, although that is a considerable waste if you take the time to actually calculate the monetary drain. It’s the opportunity cost, the work that doesn’t get done, the decisions that aren’t made, and the organizational momentum that evaporates when everyone convinces themselves that simply talking is the same as making real progress on strategic challenges.
To be clear, I’m not arguing for fewer meetings simply for the sake of having fewer meetings, some are indispensable. I’m thinking of those that create alignment, solve difficult problems, strengthen relationships, and move the organization forward in a concrete way. The challenge is recognizing the difference.
Galbraith’s observation was written about events nearly a century ago, yet it feels remarkably contemporary. Perhaps that’s because he wasn’t really writing about meetings, as much as he was writing about human nature. Isn’t it a fact that we often mistake activity for progress? Or sometimes confuse discussion with decision. And occasionally we convince ourselves that because important people are gathered in an important room with thick carpet, five-figure chairs, and a hidden bar stashing a few bottles of Pappy Van Winkle (yes, I’ve seen them) discussing important topics, something important must be happening. Sometimes that’s true, other times we’ve simply mistaken the appearance of action for action itself.
The next time you’re about to schedule a meeting, or accept an invitation to one, it may be worth asking a simple question:
Is this meeting intended to accomplish something…or merely to create the impression that something is being accomplished?
The answer may tell you whether the meeting is truly necessary.