During my last couple of years of work, I was in 30 hours of meetings per week. Of those thirty hours, I was an active participant in perhaps six hours. I may have taken notes in another four hours of the meetings because information was presented that I did not know and which was not available from other sources. For the other 20 hours I was an additional number in the head count.
Is this typical? I cannot really say as I have not had a wide enough spread of work within various companies. Is it unusual? Personally, I suspect that it is not unusual. Is it useful? That depends a lot on the purpose of the meetings. If it was to gather information, then 2/3 of my meetings were not useful. If it was to be seen then I guess they were useful -- including remote situations if the cameras are all on. If it was to raise the perceived status of the presenter, then I feel it was a lot less useful than the presenter thought it was. After all, would it raise your opinion of someone if you listened to them for an hour or two of your life and did not learn anything new nor felt that your presence was useful?
Most companies have meetings that do not need to exist. The percentage may vary depending on the processes of the company and their priorities but there are usually those that exist just to exist.
We come, therefore, to a distinction -- the distinction between a presentation and a meeting. A presentation can have "questions and answers" during, or at the end, of the gathering. During this Q&A period, information can be clarified and additional information can be obtained. The information flow is almost completely unidirectional. The presenter is passing information along to the audience.
Within a useful meeting, information flow should be omnidirectional. There may be a moderator who makes sure everyone has a chance to provide input. There may be a recorder who keeps track of what is said, any commitments made, and any work items to be assigned. The moderator and the recorder may be the same person. If so, that will slow down the flow of the meeting which could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. It will depend on the initial purpose of the meeting. In a "brainstorming" meeting, I would suggest that it would be useful to have the two roles fulfilled by two different people in order to not put obstacles in the way of information flow. Have you ever had something you wanted to say and, following a relatively short interruption, no longer know quite what it was? I certainly have.
The reason that I had so many meetings at which I was unneeded was that the presenter did not understand as to whether it was a presentation or a meeting. Thus, it was put forth as a meeting and there were people required to be present. As a presentation, it could have been put into a document or into a video presentation to be watched at a more convenient time. (A video also has the advantage of being able to be fast-forwarded past known information.) Questions and answers can still occur -- and can be distributed to the list of people who are sent, or notified of, the presentation.
When you are setting up a gathering, first decide upon information flow. Is it unidirectional or omnidirectional? Even if multiple people are presenting information during the session, it can still be unidirectional. If it is unidirectional, is it something you want to enforce watching/listening with a specific audience? A "captive" audience still may not understand/listen to the information but they lack excuses for not knowing the information. If it is omnidirectional, then a gathering will likely be useful -- but it could be remote or in-person.
If it is static information -- all is known and it is meant to flow in one direction (though possibly from multiple people) then do people need to receive it at the same time? Are you aware of the exact people who should know the information? If people other than invitees may need/want to know the information then live presentations should be recorded but it may also be an argument for the lack of need for a gathering.
In summary, meetings should be gatherings of people with omnidirectional information flow (everyone potentially has information to give as well as to receive). Presentations involve unidirectional (perhaps from more than one person) information flow. It is possible to have a presentation as part of a meeting but, in such cases, it should primarily be a meeting with information exchanged. Meetings are often useful to have as gatherings. Presentations may be more useful as documents or video recordings to allow an indeterminate group of people access to the information, allow rewatching/rereading the information, or to take in the information at a more convenient time.
