The $1.4 Trillion Meeting Problem (ft. Dr. Rebecca Hinds, author)

We talk constantly about the future of work — AI agents, automation, leaner teams, productivity gains.

But what if the real drag on performance isn’t technology — it’s coordination?

Unproductive and unnecessary meetings cost companies up to $1.4 trillion every year. Seventy-one percent of senior leaders say meetings are inefficient. The average knowledge worker now spends around 11 hours a week in meetings. And nearly half admit to faking excuses to avoid them.

This isn’t a scheduling issue.

It’s a systems issue.

Dr. Rebecca Hinds — founder of the Work Innovation Lab at Asana, the Work AI Institute at Glean, and author of YOUR BEST MEETING EVER: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done — argues that meetings are organizational “junk drawers.” Instead of asking whether a meeting is necessary, companies simply default to adding another recurring invite.

Her solution is radical in its simplicity: treat meetings like products.

Define the user. Clarify the outcome. Design the experience. Measure performance. Iterate.

In this episode, we zoom out beyond tactics and ask deeper questions:

Why are humans so inefficient at coordinating with one another?
 What do broken meetings reveal about incentives, trust, and accountability?
 Does AI meaningfully solve meeting dysfunction — or simply automate it?
 And in a world pushing toward automation, what is the human role in collaboration?

If coordination is broken, no productivity tool can save us.

And if meetings are the canary in the coal mine, we should probably pay attention.