For centuries, the company meeting—from the formal board meeting to the weekly status update—was a cornerstone of corporate operations. Its origin, predating even the telephone, was rooted in necessity. In an era devoid of instant communication, gatherings were the essential catalyst to bring about uniformity, cultivate a shared culture, and achieve operational efficiency. They served as the primary mechanism to coordinate and concentrate major efforts between departments, aligning disparate groups toward a common goal when no technological alternatives existed. However, in the dawn of the artificial intelligence age, the relevance of this traditional forum is not only in doubt but is fundamentally obsolete.
Even before the rise of AI, the utility of the scheduled, hour-long meeting was being rightfully questioned. The digital revolution provided powerful, real-time alternatives. Email, instant messaging platforms, shared document editors, and digital task schedulers could disseminate information, assign responsibilities, and track progress more efficiently than a weekly synopsis. These tools delivered the intended benefits of meetings—alignment and updates—without forcing a collective pause on productivity. Too many professionals have personally endured scheduled hour-long meetings that purposed information a simple, well-structured email would have sufficed to communicate, highlighting a growing inefficiency.
What truly accelerated the meeting’s decline, however, is its transformation into a forum that actively contradicts its intended goals. Designed to foster unity and efficiency, it often became a festering ground for corporate pathologies. The meeting room morphed into a theater for competing egos, where posturing overtook problem-solving. It strengthened office fraternities and silos, rather than breaking them down. Furthermore, it became a venue for "task stacking," where redundant or unnecessary assignments were introduced without proper vetting, derailing focused work and creating bureaucratic bloat. The very tool meant to streamline operations became a significant source of waste and friction.
The integration of AI into the workplace will only accelerate this decline exponentially. AI-powered project management tools can provide continuous, real-time status reporting, automatically flag bottlenecks, and even suggest resource reallocations. Many routine tasks and minor decisions that once required a discussion will likely be completed by AI agents or through automated workflows before a meeting can even be scheduled. In this context, convening a group of highly-paid humans to discuss what an AI has already resolved or can resolve in seconds is not merely inefficient; it is a conscious choice to be uncompetitive.
Companies now stand at a crossroads. To cling to the scheduled meeting as a default forum is to cling to an artifact of a bygone era, one that actively hampers agility and innovation. The future of collaboration is not in scheduled, synchronous gatherings, but in agile, asynchronous communication augmented by intelligent systems. Organizations must adapt by establishing clear protocols for when a meeting is truly necessary—such as for complex brainstorming, sensitive human-resource issues, or critical strategic decisions—and when it is a relic of habit. The choice is between embracing the efficiency of the future or presiding over the continued, costly decline of an old and now unnecessary tradition.