4 Sneaky Ways Meetings Can Undermine Work

This originally appeared on Forbes on March 17, 2026.

Meetings are one of the most familiar rituals of organizational life — and one of the most widely criticized and dreaded. Everyone has that one recurring meeting in the calendar that they are loath to attend and could probably instead be an email. Yet despite widespread frustration, meetings continue to be a staple of corporate life. According to Rebecca Hinds, author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done, the problem isn’t simply that meetings are poorly designed. It’s that organizations often use meetings to solve problems they were never designed to address in the first place.

What’s more, poor meeting design is not only inconvenient — it can hinder progress toward company goals in several insidious ways. Here are four sneaky ways meetings can actively undermine a business.

Read the rest on Forbes.