Reducing meetings by itself does not make the team more effective.
The number of meetings alone says little about the effectiveness of the company. Meetings take up a significant portion of work time, but many of them are necessary to make decisions, coordinate and solve complex problems. According to the NBER 2026 study of more than 9,000 employees, meetings took up an average of 12% of work time and 14% of companies' labor costs. Therefore, the management's task is not to reduce meetings at any cost, but to eliminate those that do not produce results.
The main sign of a useless meeting is the lack of a clear goal. If it is not known in advance what problem needs to be solved, why to gather these particular people and how the conversation should end, the meeting easily becomes "calendar noise". It is especially strange to gather 5 people so that everyone can tell the status of their tasks, if the same information can be read in a document or chat at work. In developer studies, 76.4% of participants reported a decrease in productivity on days with many meetings, and 61.8% reported a decrease in concentration.
But team effectiveness depends on more than just the calendar. Daily norms are often shaped by the employees themselves. Colleagues are the ones who show how acceptable it is here to meet deadlines, help each other, ask questions and admit difficulties. Such an environment can improve the quality of work, but it can also reinforce unhealthy rules. For example, the habit of answering in the evening, persistent tardiness or not taking sick leave. Therefore, a strong team culture is only beneficial when mutual accountability does not become mutual pressure.
The same goes for feedback. It works when it's about the specific job, not the personality of the employee. It is important to understand what happened, why it led and what can be changed. It is even more effective when people themselves show their unfinished work to their colleagues and ask them to look at it until the final result.