This is the personal blog of Ben Collins-Sussman. Also see Debugging Teams, his book on collaboration & culture in software engineering. His How to Leader talk (available in prose form.)
"This could have been an email" "Never invite more than 5 people" "If there's no agenda, don't show up".
Meetings are (mostly) universally hated, but also necessary to some degree in order for collaboration to function: the problem is that nobody can agree on just how much.
I've been a manager for decades, with my own strengths and weaknesses. A couple of years ago one of my reports asked me candidly:
I had no answer at first. I had to spend a few days letting my subconscious ponder the question, before I came back with a detailed answer over lunch. I realized I was being very deliberate in the way I planned and executed my staff meeting:
During the meeting, I always paid attention to the "spotlight" -- that is, who was speaking and had the attention of the moment. When necessary, I would deliberately move the spotlight to people who hadn't yet spoken, or seemed hesitant to speak.