Meetings don't replace
steering

Most executive teams feel like they're steering execution because they meet often. That feeling is exactly the problem: meeting frequency has never guaranteed steering quality — and the time meetings absorb doesn't go anywhere else.

Meeting time has exploded

Research widely cited by Harvard Business Review shows that today's executives spend an average of 23 hours a week in meetings — up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s. Meeting time has more than doubled in sixty years, without steering quality improving proportionally.

Bain & Company documented what has become a classic example: a single three-hour weekly Executive Committee meeting, once cascaded into preparation and follow-up meetings at every level of the organisation, can mobilise up to 300,000 hours of work a year. This isn't an isolated case — it's a structural cascade effect present in most large organisations as soon as a meeting ritual goes unquestioned.

The direct consequence: the majority of executives surveyed in these same studies consider their steering meetings unproductive or inefficient. The problem isn't just volume — it's the gap between time invested and value actually produced.

Being in a meeting isn't steering

A meeting gives the impression of controlling execution: indicators get presented, blockers get discussed, everyone leaves with minutes. But this ritual reassures more than it steers. Real steering — checking that decisions actually produce the expected results — mostly happens between meetings, not during them.

It's the same gap described in our article on decision rights: a well-run ritual (the meeting itself) guarantees nothing about what happens once everyone leaves the room. A strategy committee, a weekly check-in, a project steering committee, a follow-up meeting: each produces minutes that get circulated — and that's often where real follow-through stops.

4 signals that betray false steering

1. Minutes replace follow-through

The meeting ends, and no one checks that the decided actions were actually completed before the next meeting.

2. The same topics keep coming back

A point gets raised meeting after meeting, without ever really being settled — a sign the meeting is for discussing, not deciding.

3. No one knows who's supposed to decide

The meeting is used to "align" rather than to decide: the decision dissolves into the group, and no one is individually accountable for the outcome.

4. Steering only exists in the meeting room

Between two committees, no one actually looks at the indicators — the dashboard only gets consulted when it's projected on screen.

The question executive committees should be asking

Not just: "Do we have a follow-up meeting on this?"

But rather: "If we cut half our follow-up meetings, would steering actually get worse?"