Nobody Wants Another Meeting
Updated: Aug 24
Elliot Ross Surgenor is the founder and CEO of Fly Business Aviation, with operational bases in Miami, Scottsdale, and Cabo. With a background in media, entrepreneurship, and luxury aviation, he specializes in elevating private travel through innovation and exceptional client service.
I have never finished a 60-minute meeting and thought, I wish we'd booked 90. I have, however, left plenty wondering why seven people needed to be there, why something that could have been decided in ten minutes took an hour, and whether the whole thing could have been replaced by a reasonably coherent voice note.
Running a business in private aviation has probably made me less patient about this than I otherwise would be. Aviation requires constant communication. A single trip can involve pilots, operations, maintenance, a fixed-base operator (FBO), ground transportation, catering, and the client, often with plans changing in real time. Weather moves, departure times change, a passenger wants to leave earlier, or an aircraft needs attention. When something genuinely needs to happen, there is usually very little confusion about why people are talking. Several people can resolve a real operational issue in five minutes because the conversation has a clear outcome.
Then you return to normal business life and somehow spend an hour discussing whether another meeting is needed. That contrast has always amused me.
Most people I know complain about having too many meetings, yet our response to almost every new situation is to schedule one. Something isn't clear, so we meet. Someone has an idea, so we meet. We need to make a decision, so we invite everybody who might conceivably have an opinion. If two people missed the first meeting, we schedule another one to explain what happened in the meeting they missed. At some point, collaboration became almost synonymous with calendars full of rectangles.
The problem isn't that meetings are inherently bad. Some conversations absolutely need to happen in real time. The problem is that we have stopped being particularly selective about which ones do.
Talking about work can feel a lot like doing work
Meetings are comforting because they look productive. Everyone is present, people are talking, notes are being taken, and somebody is usually sharing a screen. If things are going particularly well, there may even be a spreadsheet involved. From the outside, something is clearly happening.
Whether anything is actually moving forward is another question. You can spend 45 minutes discussing a problem and leave with exactly the same problem, except now there are meeting notes. You can spend half an hour deciding who should make a decision. You can invite ten people because each person knows one piece of the story, only to discover that nobody actually owns the outcome. Of course, you can finish by agreeing that the subject needs further discussion next week.
Aviation gives you a relatively low tolerance for this because outcomes are difficult to fake. The aircraft either leaves or it doesn't. The car is either waiting, or it isn't. The crew is either available or it isn't. If the client changes the departure time, somebody has to work out what that changes.
There is a useful clarity to that. In other parts of business, it is surprisingly easy to talk around something for several weeks and still feel as though everybody has been very busy.
This is also why I don't think the solution is simply “fewer meetings.” Sometimes, getting the right people into the same conversation is by far the fastest way to solve something. If a client changes a flight at short notice and that affects crew duty time, the airport, the aircraft, and perhaps the trip that follows, I don't want twenty separate messages moving around between people. I want the relevant people to speak, understand the problem and make a decision.
Five minutes can be enough. That is what real-time communication is good at. The problem is using the same tool for everything.
If somebody is giving me information, I probably don't need a meeting. If they need a simple yes or no, we probably don't need one either. If it is a status update that requires no discussion, there is a very good chance I could read it in an email in a fraction of the time.
This is where my slightly provocative theory comes in. Your meeting probably should have been a voice note. I say that partly as a joke, but only partly. A two-minute message saying, “Here's what happened, here's what I recommend, and I need your answer on these two things,” can sometimes achieve everything a 30-minute call was supposed to accomplish.
The point isn't voice notes specifically. It is matching the form of communication to the problem instead of automatically reaching for everybody's calendar.
Collaboration can become an excuse
Another part of meeting culture I find more interesting has less to do with efficiency and more to do with responsibility.
Not everybody needs to be involved in everything. That sounds obvious, but businesses are remarkably good at forgetting it. We often invite people because it feels collaborative, because someone might have an opinion, or simply because it is easier politically than deciding who actually needs to be there.
There is an important difference between keeping somebody informed and requiring their participation. A person can understand a decision without sitting through the entire conversation that produced it.
Sometimes ten perspectives genuinely make a decision better. Sometimes they give you ten new ways to complicate something that was relatively straightforward in the first place.
The fastest way to slow down a perfectly good decision is to make absolutely sure everyone has the opportunity to contribute. Occasionally, I think meetings exist for an even simpler reason. Nobody wants to make the decision.
A meeting spreads responsibility. Instead of one person saying yes or no, seven people discuss. Instead of choosing a direction, we “align.” Instead of committing to something, we gather additional input. That additional input creates a few more questions, so everyone agrees to reconvene next Thursday.
Nobody has made the wrong decision, which is comforting. Nobody has made any decision either. There is a point where more discussion stops improving the outcome and starts postponing it. Good organizations need collaboration, but they also need people who are willing to eventually say, “We've heard enough. This is what we're doing.”
Meetings are more expensive than they look
There is also a practical cost to all of this that we rarely calculate. A one-hour meeting with eight people is not really a one-hour meeting. It is eight working hours before you even account for the time around it.
There is the person who avoids starting a complicated task because they have a call in twelve minutes. There is the person who needs another fifteen minutes afterward to get back into what they were doing. There is the employee who sits through 52 minutes of a conversation because eight minutes might eventually concern them.
Because meetings appear on a calendar rather than an invoice, we tend not to think of them as expensive. Imagine if every time you clicked “Send invitation,” a warning appeared saying, “Estimated organizational cost, 11 working hours.”
I suspect quite a few agendas would suddenly become much shorter. None of this means meetings should disappear. Some of the most useful meetings I have been in have been difficult, messy or longer than expected. What made them useful was that everyone had a genuine reason to be there. A decision had to be made, a real problem needed solving, two people genuinely disagreed, or something had changed and the plan needed to change with it.
Those conversations feel different because when they finish, something is different from when they began. That may be the simplest test. Did we make a decision? Did we understand something we didn't understand before? Did we solve a problem? Does somebody leave knowing exactly what happens next?
If the answer to all of those questions is no, it is probably worth asking what the meeting was for. Communication is essential in my business. Poor communication can ruin a trip long before the passenger reaches the aircraft. But good communication doesn't mean everybody talking all the time. Sometimes the right answer is a meeting. Sometimes it is a five-minute call. Sometimes it is three bullet points in an email. Yes, sometimes it really is the voice note.
Before putting another rectangle on six people's calendars, there is one question worth asking, "What needs to happen here that cannot happen more easily another way?"
If there is a good answer, book the meeting. If there isn't, don't. Because a good meeting moves the work forward. A bad one simply pauses the work while everyone talks about it.
Read more from Elliot Ross Surgenor
Elliot Ross Surgenor, Visionary Entrepreneur and Founder
Elliot Ross Surgenor is a leading entrepreneur in private aviation and the founder of Fly Business Aviation, based in Miami, Scottsdale, and Cabo. With a background in media and international business development, he has built a company known for its innovation, personalized service, and refined operational standards. Elliot also leads Lusso Jet Design and Air Dining Cabo, subsidiaries focused on luxury jet interiors and in-flight catering. His expertise spans brand strategy, client experience, and aviation operations. He also hosts a podcast exploring leadership and the future of the industry. Passionate about giving back, Elliot supports philanthropic efforts, including initiatives for children in need.
