The Only 5 Meetings That Matter—And How to Avoid Them Too

Throughout the day, you probably attend countless meetings: “quick chats,” “catch-ups,” “stand-ups,” “pre-mortems,” “post-mortems,” “discussions,” “brainstorming sessions,” “reviews,” and more. You wish all these meetings could be replaced by emails. But they won’t. In fact, each meeting just triggers a new flood of emails anyway.

Do you feel like you can’t get your “real” work done because of the constant stream of meetings and video calls? I get it. Same here. If you take a step back and think about it, you’ll realize that only five types of meetings are truly essential for moving the team (or the business) forward.

Can you guess them? Don’t ask ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Claude—just keep reading:

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1️⃣ IDEA Meetings

Before launching a project, a campaign, or even a new year, you need time to explore options, generate creative ideas, and discuss strategies. These meetings are especially important if you want to involve the team and create a sense of ownership from the start. Usually, these take the form of brainstorming sessions. If not run properly, they can spiral into endless discussions and ego battles.

👉 Desired outcome: A curated list of prioritized ideas and strategies.

❌ How to avoid? Implement an asynchronous process for ideation, assessment, and refinement, incorporating AI-driven categorization and prioritization based on clear criteria.

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2️⃣ ALIGNMENT Meetings

Before executing a plan—or even after completing it—you’ll need alignment with the right people. This could be your team, your line manager, colleagues at the same level, or external stakeholders. Without alignment, you’re setting yourself up for misunderstandings, inefficiency, and errors. Disaster.

👉 Desired outcome: Agreement on next steps or a shared understanding of past actions/events.

❌ How to avoid? Use a centralized system to track all plans, projects, tasks, campaigns, and relevant information. Establish a clear process for setting, reviewing, and reporting progress through this system.

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3️⃣ TROUBLESHOOTING Meetings

Problems, obstacles, mistakes, and unexpected issues are unavoidable. No escaping them. Since you work as a team, you’ll need to face and resolve these challenges together. Every issue should have a designated place, a structured pipeline, and a process for regular review and resolution. That’s why troubleshooting meetings exist.

👉 Desired outcome: Clear next steps to resolve issues efficiently.

❌ How to avoid? Implement a transparent issue-tracking system where stakeholders can submit problems, propose solutions, and follow progress. Create a structured process for moving issues through different resolution stages.

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4️⃣ UPDATE Meetings

People are not machines—they don’t always do what they say (or what you tell them to do). To keep things moving, you need to follow up, push, persuade, negotiate, and sometimes even beg. But if you do it too often, you’ll be labeled a micromanager. If you do it too rarely, tasks will drag on indefinitely.

👉 Desired outcome: A fast-paced, realistic update on progress and results.

❌ How to avoid? Maintain a system where task statuses and progress are always up to date. If done correctly, this will significantly reduce the need for update meetings—or at least make them shorter and more effective.

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5️⃣ REVIEW Meetings

Beyond tracking progress, you need to evaluate both quantity and quality. How does your content look? How is it performing? Are your ads efficient? Was this campaign a success? How is your team’s overall performance? Regular review sessions help you adjust the course as needed.

👉 Desired outcome: A clear understanding of where things stand compared to targets, budgets, and KPIs.

❌ How to avoid? If you have a strong data-tracking and reporting system, you can replace many review meetings with data dashboards and insights reports. This keeps everyone aligned without lengthy discussions.

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So, what’s the takeaway?

If a meeting doesn’t fit into one of these five categories, it’s probably unnecessary.

And even for these five, the right systems, tools, and processes can help you reduce or even eliminate many of them.

The real question is: How many unnecessary meetings are you stuck in every week?