Meetings as Culture, Part 2: Solutions to the five meeting pitfalls that reveal your organization’s culture
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Solutions to the five meeting pitfalls that reveal your organization’s culture
Picture this: one meeting buzzes with energy, ideas flowing freely as the team reaches new heights of innovation and alignment because everyone is clear on their goals and roles. Another meeting with the same people, however, feels like a slow trudge through mud—disjointed, aimless, and draining.. These starkly different experiences are not just isolated incidents; they are windows into the soul of your organization’s culture.
In the first post of this series, we explored the challenges of unproductive meetings and how they mirror deeper organizational culture. Leaders set the tone for meetings and are accountable for their quality. Today, we'll delve into the five most common meeting pitfalls and share actionable insights from our BTS client experiences to help you overcome these challenges. By addressing these issues head-on, you can lead meetings that both enhance your company’s culture and accelerate business results.Here's how you can start turning the tide on ineffective meetings and use them as a catalyst for positive change:
1. The pitfall: Meetings that have no clear purpose or plan.
The conversation meanders as employees watch the minutes tick by and wonder, “Why am I here?”
The solution: State the purpose before the meeting starts. Keep it short and make sure it is clear. A good meeting has a single, clearly defined purpose. Are we meeting to share information? To solve a problem? To generate ideas? The meeting may involve different types of discussions, but ultimately those discussions should align with the purpose. If people are clear on the purpose before they join, they will come better prepared and be more engaged. They will know what meetings they need to be there for, and when to politely say “no” or have a colleague represent them. And you as the leader will guide the conversation more effectively because everyone has prepared for the same purpose.
2. The pitfall: At the end of a meeting, nothing seems different, new or clear.
When participants leave with no new actionable information or insights, no decision to guide them, or no input to weigh for a future decision, it can lead to overwhelm and in the end – frustration as nothing new happens as an outcome of the meeting.
The solution: Set and share a meeting target at the beginning. Think of the target as the meeting’s conversational destination that everyone is driving toward together, which adds specificity to the meeting’s purpose. Aligning expectations on a target focuses the conversation. It gives you the opportunity to uncover other agendas that might be lurking ready to derail the progress. Finally, it allows everyone to assess the group’s progress toward the stated target at the end of the meeting, and what enabled or hindered it.
Consider these examples:
- Meeting purpose—Information sharing.
- Meeting target—Everyone will gain an understanding of the priorities of each department and can help or stay out of the way as needed.
- Meeting purpose—Problem solving. Meeting target—Everyone will agree on an approach for handling delinquent accounts before the end of year.
- Meeting purpose – Connection and relationship building. Meeting target – Everyone will get a deeper understanding of each other, areas of work, priorities and other key beliefs, allowing us to work better together
3. The pitfall: Lopsided participation.
We've all endured meetings derailed by unhelpful tangents. Meanwhile, some participants remain silent, either because they are uncomfortable, feel unequipped to contribute, or don't see the meeting's value. Attempts to steer the conversation back on track may fail, especially with dominant personalities overpowering the discussion.
The solution: Active participation only. To counter lopsidedness, invite participants selectively. Ask yourself, "Who must be at this meeting to achieve the desired target?" Invite only those individuals. Break the habit of inviting people just because they've always attended. Observers often disrupt and distract. Meetings should be for active participants, not disengaged attendees or "spectators."
If essential participants tend to dominate conversations, address this privately. Share your expectations and coach them on the rules of engagement if necessary. The challenge lies in defying the unspoken social and political norms of your organization by inviting only those necessary to achieve the meeting's purpose. The larger the meeting with peripheral participants, the more it signals low organizational trust.
While limiting invitations might feel like a power move or a career risk, it's essential to clearly articulate your rationale for keeping the invite list focused. You can also seek advice from colleagues on who the essential participants might be. Understand that the first attempt to invite a smaller crew will be challenging, and subsequent efforts might be as well, but the benefits will be worth it.
Engaging the right participants allows the participants to feel buy-in, experience effective implementation, and co-author a future that aligns with your strategic goals.
4. The pitfall: the meeting ends with no defined next steps.
When no one knows what needs to be done, by whom, or by when, you can be sure of one thing: nothing will happen. If the only clear next step is to have another meeting on the same topic, you have failed.
The solution: outline topics and topic owners in advance. The purpose is the reason to move; the target is the destination; the topics are the stepping stones to get there. List the necessary topics to reach the target.
For each topic, define one outcome and assign an “owner” to lead the discussion and handle related action items. This owner drives the group to agree on the next steps before moving on. This approach not only ensures clarity but also shares accountability and balances participation.
Arrange the topics from most to least important, ensuring all are essential to the target. Cut any non-essential topics.
5. The pitfall: we’re always in meetings and never able to get things done.
Meetings often drag on to fill the allotted time, or worse, participants rush through important discussions before the clock runs out.
The solution: schedule realistically. Schedule meetings based on the actual time needed to achieve the target. Not every meeting requires an hour—some may only need 20 minutes, while others might warrant an entire afternoon. Consider a meeting’s duration as a contract with the group. Overrunning the time signals a shortage of respect for participants and their time. If this happens regularly, look into the cultural norm that tolerates this cycle of delay. If the agenda is packed and you’re concerned about time, assign a timekeeper to monitor progress against the plan. Alternatively, defer some topics to another meeting. It’s better to have thorough discussions on fewer items than to give only token consideration to important topics.
By examining your current meeting practices, you can uncover inefficiencies that reveal deeper cultural issues. Whether it’s lack of preparation, poor time management, or dominant voices, each clue helps you make intentional changes. Redefining culture doesn’t require sweeping changes; small, deliberate steps in how you lead meetings can make a big impact. Start by clarifying meeting purposes, ensuring active participation, setting clear next steps, and scheduling realistically. Every meeting is both a microcosm of your culture—and an opportunity to reinforce your organization’s values and goals.
Imagine the ripple effect: a team leaving each meeting energized and aligned, spreading a culture of accountability, collaboration, and innovation. Small meeting changes can lead to a profound culture transformation. Remember, every well-led meeting sets the tone for a winning culture.
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Organizations have long wanted to scale coaching, but have been limited by cost and capacity. With AI, that's beginning to change as new platforms make coaching more accessible, flexible, and available on demand, extending support beyond a select group of leaders to entire populations.
For talent leaders, this shift creates both opportunity and complexity. With greater reach comes a new set of trade-offs: how to balance access with depth, flexibility with accountability, and efficiency with meaningful development.
The limits of unlimited (coaching).
Unlimited coaching sounds like the obvious answer. Remove the barriers, give everyone access, let people engage on their own terms. What's not to like?
In practice, quite a bit.
When coaching has no defined structure or cadence, engagement tends to become episodic - people show up when something feels urgent and step back when it doesn't. The coaching relationship never quite deepens. Conversations cover ground but don't build on it. And the development that was supposed to happen keeps getting pushed to the next session, and the next.
Three patterns emerge:
- Sporadic engagement over sustained development. Without a rhythm to anchor the work, coaching becomes reactive. Clients bring whatever is most pressing that week rather than working toward something larger. Progress happens in bursts, if at all.
- Insights that don't compound. Great coaching reveals patterns over time - things a client can't see in one session but can't unsee after several. Without continuity, and without a consistent coaching relationship to hold the thread, each conversation starts close to zero.
- Outcomes that are hard to measure. No milestones. No defined endpoint. No clear way for the organization, or the client, to know whether it's working. Activity fills the gap where impact should be.
The result is a model that's easy to scale and hard to defend. Which is exactly the problem talent leaders are navigating right now.
The relationship is the lever.
Decades of research into what makes coaching work keeps arriving at the same answer: it's the relationship. Not the platform, not the methodology. The relationship.
When a coach and client build trust over time, developing shared language, and returning to the same themes with increasing depth, something shifts. Conversations get more honest. Insights stick. The client starts doing the work between sessions, not just during them. That's when coaching becomes genuinely transformative, and it can't be rushed or replicated in a one-off session.
The ICF and EMCC are clear on this: continuity is what dives outcomes. The coaching engagements that produce lasting change are the ones where each session builds on the last, not the ones that simply offer more access.
Three principles make that possible: Consistency, Continuity, and Completion.
1. Consistency
The foundation everything else is built on.
The temptation when designing a coaching program is to treat flexibility as a feature - let people book when they want, swap coaches freely, engage on their own schedule. But frequent coach changes reset the clock. Every new coach has to earn trust, learn context, and find their footing with the client. That's time spent getting started, not getting somewhere.
A stable coaching relationship works differently:
- The coach starts to see around corners, uncovering patterns the client can't see on their own
- The client stops performing and starts being honest
- The relationship itself becomes a source of accountability, not just the sessions
Consistency doesn't constrain the work. It's what makes the deeper work possible.
2. Continuity
What turns a series of sessions into genuine development.
Without continuity, coaching tends to be additive at best- each session offers something useful, but nothing compounds. With it, the work builds on itself in ways that can't happen in isolated conversations.
What continuity makes possible:
- A limiting belief surfaced in session three becomes a thread that runs through the rest of the engagement
- A behavioral pattern the client couldn't see at the start becomes impossible to ignore by the end
- Space opens up for the harder work - the kind that requires sitting with discomfort across multiple sessions, not resolving it quickly and moving on
That slower, deeper work is where lasting change actually happens. It doesn't come from more sessions. It comes from the right sessions, in the right order, with the same person.
3. Completion
The most underrated principle of the three.
In a world of unlimited access, there's no finish line, and without one, it's surprisingly hard to know what you're working toward, or whether you've gotten there. A defined endpoint changes the entire shape of an engagement.
A clear endpoint creates urgency and focuses every session on what matters most.
- Shifts the question from "what should we talk about this week?" to "what do we need to accomplish before we're done?"
- Gives both coach and client a body of work to look back on, not just a log of conversations
For talent leaders, this is also what makes coaching legible as an investment. Sessions logged is an activity metric. A cohort of leaders who completed a structured engagement and can articulate what changed, that's a result.
Don't just scale it, design it (here’s how)
The opportunity in front of talent leaders right now is significant. The organizations that will get the most from this moment are the ones that treat coaching design as seriously as coaching delivery.
Practical design decisions:
- Define the arc before you launch: set the number of sessions, the cadence, and the goals upfront, not after people have already started booking
- Protect the coaching relationship: Make coach switching the exception, not the default, and design your program to discourage unnecessary re-matches
- Build in milestones: create structured check-ins at the midpoint and end of each engagement so progress is visible to both the coach and the organization
- Separate on-demand support from developmental coaching: Use AI-enabled tools for in-the-moment guidance, and reserve structured engagements for the deeper work
- Measure completion, not just activation: Track how many people finish an engagement, not just how many start one
Questions to pressure-test your design:
- Does every participant know what they're working toward before their first session?
- Can your coaches see enough context about a client's journey to pick up where they left off?
- Would you be able to show, at the end of a cohort, what changed, and for whom?
Access opened the door. Intention is what makes it worth walking through.
Three decisions that changed everything.
Two years ago, we made three deliberate decisions about how BTS would move with Applied AI.
We would become our own Customer Zero.
While others were building strategies, defining governance, and waiting for clarity, we made a different call: we decided not to wait. Not because the stakes were low, but because they were high. And because in a space evolving this quickly, clarity wouldn’t come from planning. It would come from movement.
So instead of starting with a roadmap, we started with three principles:
- No top-down mandate. The people closest to the work figure it out.
- IT must evolve from gatekeeper to enabler - leading AI trials and fast experimentation.
- Don’t wait for certainty.
We set the organization in motion, and once we did, things started to move quickly.
What if we started this company today?
Waiting for certainty is itself a choice, and it’s costing companies more than they realize.
We started where we knew the work best: our simulations. No perfect plan, just teams moving, trying, and iterating.
Simulations are core to who we are at BTS. Companies that simulate don’t just make better decisions; they execute faster and build more engaged cultures.
The team asked a simple question:
"What if we were to start our company today?”
That question started the flywheel.
They asked IT for a few licenses and started building - vibe-coding, writing agents, and testing tools - moving at a pace that would make any VC-backed start-up smile.
The messy middle.
At first, the team was underwhelmed.
The early reports were blunt:
“Not good with math.”
“Poor graph capabilities.”
The team wasn't discouraged. They kept tinkering - jumping between tools, staying on top of new releases, experimenting constantly.
This was a small team, across 24 countries, building off each other’s ideas. Laughing at crazy creations. Breaking things. Iterating in a sandbox alongside real clientwork.
Each cycle produced something:
- A sharper scenario
- A faster build
- A more powerful simulation
The flywheel was turning, and it was generating something real.
When the diamond appeared.
Then something shifted.
The team moved into client trials across five countries. They figured out ISO compliance and built the architecture to handle the complexity, the “spaghetti.”
And what emerged wasn’t incremental:
- What used to take weeks started happening in days.
- Limited creativity started to feel like unlimited innovation.
- Clients became self-serving.
- Agentic simulations were built directly into client systems for real-time updates and preparation.
This was our first AI diamond - a high-impact outcome created by many cycles of experimentation compounding into real value.
It only appeared because we kept the flywheel turning, each cycle increasing the odds that something would break through.
95% adoption in eight weeks.
Then it was time to take the AI diamond global.
BTS is decentralized and highly entrepreneurial. We operate across 24 countries and 38 offices, where local teams have real autonomy.
And historically? That’s meant a low appetite for adopting something built somewhere else and pushed from the center.
So we expected resistance.
Instead, something surprising happened.
In the first eight weeks, we saw 95% adoption across our global footprint.
It felt completely different from our own digital initiatives, ERP implementations, top-down rollouts of the past.
This moved on its own. Why?
We realized it didn’t start with a framework or a model, it started with a feeling.
The feeling of being at the leading edge of one’s craft and profession.
- Joy
- Excitement
- Pride
As we watched this play out across teams it stopped feeling like isolated wins.
There was a pattern to it. A repeatable, organic, innovation motion.
And the flywheel didn’t stop with simulations.
It spread across finance, sales enablement, legal, operations, and client delivery. Some cycles led to small improvements, and others revealed new diamonds.
Not becausewe planned for them, but because we built the conditions for people to find them.
The question I'd ask any CEO right now: Is your flywheel turning, or are you still waiting for the perfect plan?
In part 2, I’ll share the key success factors behind the breakthrough, and what we’re now seeing across more than 120 global clients.
La maggior parte delle riunioni di vendita non fallisce.
Semplicemente non porta a una decisione.
Ed è lì che si perde valore.
I clienti di oggi sono più informati, più selettivi e hanno meno tempo.
Non hanno bisogno di altre presentazioni di prodotto.
Hanno bisogno di conversazioni che li aiutino a stabilire le priorità, decidere e andare avanti.
Eppure, il 58% delle riunioni di vendita non riesce a creare valore reale.
Non perché i venditori manchino di capacità, ma perché le conversazioni non sono progettate per far avanzare le decisioni.
“I clienti non agiscono su ogni esigenza che riconoscono.
Agiscono quando qualcosa diventa una priorità.”
In questo breve executive brief scoprirai:
- Perché la maggior parte delle conversazioni informa… ma non porta all’azione
- Cosa spinge davvero i clienti a stabilire priorità e muoversi
- Come creare urgenza senza compromettere la fiducia
- Il passaggio dal presentare soluzioni al facilitare decisioni
- Cosa distingue le conversazioni che si bloccano da quelle che accelerano il progresso
Se i tuoi team stanno affrontando trattative bloccate, decisioni ritardate o un pipeline lento, questo brief ti aiuterà a capire il perché e cosa fare in modo diverso.
Scarica l’executive brief e scopri come progettare conversazioni che portano davvero a decisioni.