Most Meetings Are a Waste of Time
- Jun 7
- 4 min read
By Josiah Roche
Fractional CMO, JRR Marketing
Most meetings are a complete waste of time.
Not because the people are stupid. And not because the business lacks good intentions. Most meetings fail because people mistake talking for thinking.
Someone says the company needs “better leads,” “memorable branding,” or “higher quality customers,” and everyone nods because the language sounds reasonable enough. Then the conversation keeps moving along, so nobody really stops to ask what any of those phrases actually mean.
But eventually somebody has to write the strategy down. And that’s usually when things start falling apart.
One person wants larger clients. Somebody else wants more and cheaper leads. Then you’ve got another person thinking about fulfillment problems, refund rates, or customer support tickets after the sale.
At first, it feels like everyone’s agreeing to the same thing because they’re all using the same words. But once the ideas actually get written down properly, people realize they were imagining completely different outcomes the whole time.
And honestly, this happens constantly.
People don’t interrogate language in normal conversation. They hear phrases that sound roughly correct and their brain fills in the gaps automatically (heuristics). You see this everywhere. Business meetings. Dinner parties. Relationships. Politics. People assume they understand each other because nobody’s slowing the conversation down enough to test the idea properly.
Writing interrupts that illusion.
Once something gets written down properly, weak arguments become easier to see. Vague claims suddenly look vague. Contradictions become harder to ignore because the idea now has structure instead of momentum carrying it forward.
That’s one reason writing matters so much in strategy and decision-making.
A weak idea can survive a conversation for months. It usually struggles once somebody has to explain it properly in writing. Like “we’re getting 1,000,000 impressions per month”, inferring that has something to do with an increase in sales.
I work in marketing, and you see this constantly with offers and advertising. A business owner will say they need more customers, which sounds fine at first. But then you ask why somebody should buy from them instead of another company selling something similar.
The answer turns into broad claims like better service, better quality, or better results. Or they start listing ten different selling points (USPs) at once because they haven’t decided what actually matters most to the buyer.
And the funny part is the business owner usually understands the difference perfectly well in their own head. They know why their company is better. They know why customers stay longer. They know why certain clients get better results than others.
But customers can’t see inside somebody else’s head.
They can only react to the words in front of them.
That’s why writing matters far beyond communication. Writing forces prioritization. It forces people to decide what matters, what doesn’t, and what another person actually needs to understand before making a decision.
And that process changes strategy itself.
A lot of businesses think they have a marketing problem when they really have a positioning problem. Or an offer problem. Or a communication problem. Sometimes the ads are fine. The targeting is fine. The traffic is fine. The real issue is that the business still hasn’t explained the value in a way that feels immediate and believable to another person.
Writing exposes that very quickly.
That’s also why some of the best operators tend to write well. Not because they’re trying to become authors, but because writing forces them to organise their thinking. If somebody can explain a business idea simply, defend the logic behind it, and remove unnecessary complexity, there’s a good chance they actually understand what they’re doing.
The same thing happens with thought leadership content.
Most business content online is written backwards. The writer starts with the goal of sounding intelligent, experienced, or insightful, then builds the article around that image. You can usually feel it within the first few paragraphs. The sentences get larger. The wording becomes softer and more corporate.
Every point feels polished, but nothing really lands for the reader. It’s boring.
Most people have seen this kind of content before. It sounds professional while saying almost nothing.
And readers are much better at detecting that than people realize.
The internet has trained people to filter aggressively. They’ve seen too many generic LinkedIn posts, recycled business advice threads, and articles packed with words but empty underneath. So when somebody writes from actual observation instead of performance, people notice the difference immediately.
That’s usually what makes thought leadership work.
Not confidence. Not jargon. Not trying to sound like the smartest person in the room.
The writing people remember usually comes from somebody noticing a real pattern and explaining it plainly enough that other people recognize it too.
Maybe it’s why sales calls lose momentum once pricing gets mentioned. Maybe it’s why businesses start attracting low-quality leads after broadening the offer too much. Maybe it’s why some founders stay stuck because they keep changing strategies before anything has enough time to work.
Whatever the topic is, the reader recognizes the pattern because they’ve already seen parts of it themselves.
People trust observations that feel earned. They trust details that sound lived-in. They trust writing that helps explain situations they already felt but couldn’t fully describe yet.
And that’s also how ideas turn into influence.
People rarely repeat ideas because the writing sounds polished. They repeat ideas because the idea helps them explain something better to somebody else.
A useful sentence gives people language they can borrow in meetings, sales calls, presentations, or conversations with clients. A good framework helps somebody explain a frustrating problem to their team. A sharp observation gives somebody a better way to describe what they’re already experiencing.
Most influence spreads this way.
Somebody reads an idea. Then they repeat it later in a conversation. Then somebody else repeats it again somewhere else. And eventually the idea starts travelling on its own.
Good writers understand that instinctively.
They don’t just write for the original reader. They write for the moment the reader repeats the idea to somebody else.
That’s why the best writing is usually simpler than people expect. Simpler doesn’t mean shallow. It just means the writer has removed everything that gets in the way of the point.
In my experience, people who understand something deeply can usually explain it without hiding behind complicated language. They’re not trying to sound impressive. They’re trying to make sure the other person understands exactly what they mean.
Good writing does the same thing.
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