6 Types of Meetings You Should Keep and the 6 You Should Stop as a Business

Why Business Meeting Types Matter More Than Ever

The modern workplace is drowning in meetings. Research reveals that employees spend an average of 62 meetings per month, resulting in 31 hours of lost productivity, with a staggering 71% rating their meetings as a complete waste of time. Companies like Shopify have demonstrated the dramatic financial impact, cancelling 12,000 events and saving an estimated $8.4 million by eliminating unnecessary gatherings. Meanwhile, only 36% of employees feel engaged at work, partly due to overwhelming pointless meetings that interrupt focus and drain energy.

How Poor Meeting Types Impact Your Business Bottom Line

The hidden costs of ineffective meetings extend beyond obvious time waste. Meeting fatigue creates mentally exhausted employees with little energy for deep work or creative problem-solving. The physical environment plays a crucial role—cramped rooms with poor acoustics doom strategic discussions, while inadequate technology compounds problems.

The psychological impact cannot be understated. When employees repeatedly experience poorly planned gatherings, they lose faith in the meeting process entirely, making them less likely to contribute meaningfully even to well-structured sessions.

Problems With Meetings Have Reached a Tipping Point

Problems with meetings have reached a tipping point. Employees report feeling trapped in endless cycles of status updates, recurring meetings without clear agendas, and oversized gatherings where they sit as passive observers. But here's the reality: not all meetings are created equal. The solution isn't to eliminate meetings entirely—it's to be strategic about which types add value and which are organizational habits that need to die.

This guide provides an actionable framework: six types of meetings you should absolutely keep because they drive real business results, and six types you should eliminate immediately to reclaim time and productivity. We'll show you how to pair each valuable meeting type with ideal room layouts and technology setups, connecting each purpose with the perfect Davinci coworking environment to maximize effectiveness.

Strategic Planning Meeting Types That Drive Results (those to keep)

When it comes to meetings to keep, they fall into two areas. First, strategic planning meetings translate vision into actionable results through careful orchestration and environments that foster deep thinking and collaborative decision-making. Second, operational meetings maintain daily business machinery through coordination, communication, and individual development.

1. Quarterly Planning Meeting Types

Quarterly planning meetings transform ambitious annual goals into manageable 90-day objectives. Unlike weekly tactical check-ins focused on immediate tasks, these strategic sessions create space for teams to assess progress and recalibrate approaches based on market changes.

The 90-day timeframe balances long-term vision with short-term execution—long enough for meaningful initiatives yet short enough to maintain urgency. Teams review performance metrics, discuss company-wide initiatives, and establish clear OKRs aligned with organizational priorities. The quarterly cadence allows organizations to remain agile in rapidly changing markets.

Solution: Premium boardrooms with state-of-the-art video conferencing accommodate 8 to 12 senior stakeholders while providing acoustic privacy. Large wall-mounted displays present data visualizations, while collaborative digital whiteboards enable real-time strategy mapping and scenario planning.

2. Decision-Making Meeting Types

Decision-making meetings serve critical choices requiring diverse perspectives and immediate consensus. These focused gatherings cut through “analysis paralysis” by bringing together stakeholders to evaluate options, weigh trade-offs, and commit to clear paths forward.

Success requires crystal-clear objectives, only necessary stakeholders who can contribute meaningfully, and actionable outcomes with assigned ownership. Unlike brainstorming sessions, these meetings conclude with definitive choices and next steps. Effective sessions require psychological safety and structured processes where participants feel comfortable challenging assumptions.

Solution: Professional conference rooms provide controlled environments for four to eight key decision-makers. High-quality audio and video systems ensure remote stakeholders participate equally, preventing technical barriers from compromising decision quality.

3. All-Hands Meeting Types

All-hands meetings create company-wide alignment and organizational transparency, serving as the central nervous system of corporate communication. They ensure everyone understands company direction and how individual contributions fit the bigger picture.

Benefits extend beyond information sharing to cross-departmental visibility that breaks down silos, trust building through transparent leadership communication, and shared moments celebrating milestones. These meetings are particularly valuable during periods of change when clear communication becomes critical for maintaining employee confidence.

Solution: Event spaces and large meeting rooms accommodate substantial audiences with clear sightlines. Professional presentation equipment and live streaming capabilities enable hybrid participation, ensuring no one misses critical communications.

4. One-on-One Meeting Types

One-on-one meetings between managers and direct reports maintain individual engagement and provide personalized support. These private conversations create strong working relationship foundations and address challenges before they become major issues.

Regular sessions provide critical opportunities for managers to understand individual motivations, career aspirations, and performance obstacles. They create safe spaces for honest feedback and professional development discussions impossible in group settings. These meetings also serve as early warning systems for potential problems like burnout or disengagement.

Solution: Private offices and phone booths offer intimate, secure environments for building trust and candid discussions about performance and career development. Basic video calling capabilities ensure consistent remote connection while maintaining the personal touch that makes these meetings effective.

5. Daily Stand-up Meeting Types

Daily stand-ups work effectively for teams needing tight coordination, particularly in software development or project-based work where tasks are interdependent. These brief sessions maintain alignment on immediate goals, quickly identify blockers, and sustain momentum without excessive time consumption.

The 15-minute limit forces focus on essential updates, while standing format discourages lengthy discussions. Team members share yesterday's accomplishments, today's plans, and progress obstacles. These meetings prevent small issues from becoming major roadblocks by surfacing problems early when they're easier to solve.

Solution: Collaboration zones and huddle spaces accommodate 5-8 people standing comfortably while maintaining energy. Simple displays show digital task boards for visual progress tracking during updates.

6. Innovation and Problem-Solving Meeting Types

Innovation meetings provide structured opportunities for generating new ideas and tackling complex challenges requiring diverse perspectives. These sessions are particularly valuable for organizations in competitive markets demanding continuous evolution.

Success requires psychological safety where participants share unconventional ideas without judgment. Sessions work best focusing on specific challenges, involving cross-functional teams, and employing structured brainstorming techniques that encourage both divergent and convergent thinking. Unlike routine meetings, innovation sessions should embrace controlled chaos and experimental thinking.

Solution: Flexible meeting spaces with moveable furniture enable dynamic collaboration supporting various brainstorming formats. Digital whiteboards and collaborative tools capture ideas in real-time while enabling equal remote participation.

[6 Types of Meetings You Should Keep]

Meeting Types to Eliminate

When it comes to meetings to eliminate, they also fall into two buckets. First, information-only meetings represent the most common productivity drain, masquerading as necessary communication while stealing valuable time without providing equivalent value. Second, meetings with poor structure transforms well-intentioned meetings into productivity disasters lacking fundamental frameworks to guide discussion or achieve meaningful outcomes.

1. Status Update Meeting Types

Status update meetings epitomize "meetings that could have been emails," involving participants taking turns reporting work without meaningful discussion or collaborative problem-solving. They treat valuable human interaction as simple information broadcasting. These meetings fail because they consume collective time for individual information sharing. Participants sit passively while others share updates that rarely impact their own work. The fundamental problem is that status updates don't require real-time collaboration—when people simply read from task lists without generating discussion, the meeting becomes performance rather than productive activity.

Better Alternatives: Asynchronous reporting tools like Slack updates, weekly email summaries, or shared dashboards team members review at convenience, providing same information visibility without sacrificing collective focus time.

2. Recurring Meeting Types Without Clear Purpose

Recurring meetings without clear purpose persist from organizational habit rather than genuine necessity. These automatic calendar events continue without anyone questioning ongoing value or relevance to current business needs.

The problem stems from habit-driven scheduling where meetings were once useful but have outlived their original purpose. Teams change, projects evolve, priorities shift, yet gatherings continue consuming time simply because they exist in calendars. These meetings often lack clear agendas, defined outcomes, or success metrics.

Solution: Implement quarterly meeting audits requiring organizers to justify each recurring event's continued existence and document clear objectives. Apply "zero-based budgeting" principles—assume every recurring meeting should be canceled unless there's compelling justification.

3. Large Information Broadcast Meeting Types

Large broadcast meetings where one person presents to many without meaningful interaction represent massive collective time inefficiency. When 20+ people gather watching one person read slides without discussion opportunities, meetings become expensive theater rather than productive business communication.

This approach wastes not only the presenter's time but multiplies that waste across every attendee. A one-hour presentation to 20 people consumes 20 hours of collective organizational time, making it one of the most expensive forms of communication possible.

Better Alternatives: Record presentations as videos for convenient viewing at faster speeds, create detailed written documentation, and use asynchronous Q&A platforms enabling thoughtful responses after material review.

4. Meeting Types Without Agendas

Meetings without agendas consistently fail delivering value and should be canceled immediately. These unstructured gatherings meander without direction, consuming time while producing minimal results.

Without discussion roadmaps, meetings become unfocused conversations jumping between topics randomly, often revisiting issues multiple times without resolution. Participants arrive unprepared because they don't know what to expect, leading to superficial discussions and delayed decisions.

Rule: If organizers cannot articulate clear purpose, specific objectives, and desired outcomes in advance, the meeting shouldn't happen. The act of creating an agenda forces organizers to think through whether the gathering is truly necessary.

5. Overlapping Meeting Types

Overlapping meetings covering same topics or identical updates across multiple sessions create redundancy and accelerate meeting fatigue. These duplicate conversations waste collective time while frustrating participants repeating information in different forums.

The problem occurs when different teams schedule separate meetings discussing interconnected projects, leading to stakeholders attending multiple sessions covering nearly identical ground. Asana's "Meetings Doomsday" approach deleted all recurring meetings and started fresh, saving participants 11 hours per month.

Solution: Implement comprehensive meeting calendar audits identifying and eliminating duplicate conversations. Consolidate overlapping sessions into single, well-structured meetings serving multiple stakeholder groups.

6. Meeting Types with Too Many Participants

Meetings with too many participants indicate unclear scope, creating gatherings where most attendees become passive observers rather than active contributors. When more than five to seven people attend meetings where most don't actively contribute, large groups create social loafing effects reducing individual accountability.

As group size increases, opportunity for meaningful participation by each member decreases exponentially. Oversized meetings also discourage honest discussion, as people become less willing to share dissenting opinions in front of large audiences.

Solution: Restructure oversized gatherings into smaller, purpose-driven sessions with clear roles for each participant. Create tiered communication systems where core teams make decisions and share outcomes through documentation.

[caption] Six Types of Meeting You Should Stop

Optimizing Meeting Types in Modern Coworking Environments

Modern coworking environments like Davinci Meeting Rooms offer unique advantages for implementing strategic meeting optimization, providing flexible infrastructure and technology integration supporting both productive gatherings and meeting reduction strategies.

Supporting Meeting Reduction Strategies

Coworking spaces naturally discourage unnecessary meetings through booking systems and visible costs. When teams must reserve and pay for meeting rooms, they become more intentional about gathering purposes, eliminating casual "let's just grab a conference room" mentality leading to spontaneous, unproductive meetings.

Flexible Space Booking for Right-Sized Meetings

Space variety enables teams matching meeting types with appropriate environments. Phone booths serve one-on-ones, huddle rooms accommodate stand-ups, professional conference rooms host decision-making sessions, and large event spaces handle all-hands meetings. This constraint prevents booking oversized rooms encouraging unnecessary participants.

Technology Integration for Hybrid and Asynchronous Work

Advanced video conferencing capabilities support hybrid meetings while encouraging asynchronous alternatives. High-quality recording equipment enables presentation videos instead of large broadcast meetings. Collaborative technology allows remote innovation session participation, reducing physical presence requirements.

Implementation Success Stories

Organizations using Davinci Coworking Spaces report improved meeting discipline due to intentional booking processes. Teams naturally consolidate overlapping meetings when facing space costs and availability constraints. Professional environments elevate scheduled gathering importance while casual spaces encourage informal problem-solving preventing issues from escalating to formal meetings.

Modern coworking spaces also provide data on room usage patterns, helping organizations identify meeting trends and optimize booking strategies. Analytics reveal which meeting types consistently run over time, which spaces remain underutilized, and when teams schedule back-to-back meetings creating fatigue.

Transform Your Meeting Types for Maximum Business Impact

The choice between productive and wasteful meetings comes down to strategic selection and proper execution. The six meeting types to keep—quarterly planning, decision-making, all-hands, one-on-ones, daily stand-ups, and innovation sessions—drive real business results when paired with appropriate environments. Eliminating the six wasteful types—status updates, purposeless recurring meetings, broadcast sessions, agenda-less gatherings, overlapping discussions, and oversized groups—immediately reclaims valuable time and energy.

Success depends on matching each meeting type with optimal space and technology setups while maintaining rigorous standards for preparation and execution. Strategic planning requires formal boardrooms with sophisticated presentation capabilities, innovation meetings thrive in flexible workshops, stand-ups work best in casual huddle spaces, and sensitive one-on-ones need private offices ensuring confidential conversations.

Take Action Today: Conduct a comprehensive audit of your current meeting culture using this framework. Document all recurring meetings for one month, categorizing each according to the types outlined here. Identify gatherings falling into "eliminate immediately" categories and cancel them without delay.

Consider implementing a "meeting reset"—temporarily canceling all recurring meetings and requiring justification for reinstatement. This reveals how many meetings persist purely out of habit while forcing teams to be intentional about collaborative time.

Ready to optimize your meeting strategy and transform organizational productivity? Explore Davinci Meeting Rooms' diverse meeting environments, each designed to maximize the effectiveness of different gathering types' effectiveness while providing flexibility to eliminate unnecessary meetings through improved alternatives and natural constraints.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1: How can I tell if a meeting is truly necessary or just a waste of time?

A1: Ask yourself if the meeting requires real-time collaboration, decision-making, or discussion that can't be handled through email or shared documents. If the purpose is simply to share information that people can read on their own time, or if you can't clearly articulate specific objectives and desired outcomes in advance, the meeting likely isn't necessary.

Q2: What's the ideal number of participants for productive meetings?

A2: Most effective meetings have fewer than eight participants, with the optimal size depending on the meeting type. Decision-making meetings work best with four to eight key stakeholders, while innovation sessions can accommodate slightly larger cross-functional teams. When more than seven people attend and most don't actively contribute, it's usually a sign the meeting needs restructuring.

Q3: How often should we conduct meeting audits to eliminate wasteful gatherings?

A3: Organizations should implement comprehensive meeting audits quarterly to maintain healthy meeting cultures. This involves requiring organizers to justify each recurring meeting's continued existence and document clear objectives. Some companies find success with annual "meeting resets" where all recurring meetings are temporarily canceled and must be re-justified for reinstatement.

Q4: What technology setup is most important for hybrid meetings?

A4: High-quality audio and video systems are essential for ensuring remote participants can contribute equally to discussions. Clear communication technology prevents important perspectives from being lost due to technical barriers. Additionally, collaborative tools like digital whiteboards enable real-time participation for innovation and planning sessions regardless of location.

Q5: How do coworking spaces help reduce unnecessary meetings?

A5: Coworking environments naturally discourage wasteful meetings through visible booking costs and intentional reservation processes. When teams must actively reserve and pay for meeting spaces, they become more thoughtful about gathering purposes and duration. The variety of space options also helps match meeting types with appropriate environments, preventing oversized rooms that encourage unnecessary participants.

Related Resources

What is the Difference between a Board Room and a Conference Room?

https://www.davincimeetingrooms.com/blog/boardroom-vs-conference-room-differences

12 Meeting Rooms Setups and Styles to Maximize Engagement and Productivity

https://www.davincimeetingrooms.com/blog/12-meeting-rooms-setups-and-styles-to-maximize-engagement-and-productivity

What is a Hybrid Meeting Room? And How to Set One Up

https://www.davincimeetingrooms.com/blog/what-is-a-hybrid-meeting-room-how-to-set-one-up

10 Hybrid Meetings Best Practices

https://www.davincimeetingrooms.com/blog/10-best-practices-for-hybrid-meetings

Ultimate List of Ground Rules for Effective Meetings

https://www.davincimeetingrooms.com/blog/ultimate-list-of-ground-rules-for-effective-meetings

Virtual Meetings vs In Person Meetings: Pros and Cons

https://www.davincimeetingrooms.com/blog/virtual-meetings-vs-in-person-meetings

About Kendalia Spencer

Kendalia Spencer is a Content Strategist at TIRO Communications, blending her passion for business, arts, and technology. With an MBA in Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Advanced Leadership, and Strategy from the University of Oregon, she focuses on remote work and entrepreneurship technologies. Her background in music and violin performance, with degrees from the University of Oregon and University of Colorado, informs her creative and collaborative content strategies.