“A common time waster is mal-organization. Its symptom is an excess of meetings. Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time. If executives in an organization spend more than a fairly small part of their time in meetings, it is a sure sign of mal-organization.

As a rule, meetings should never be allowed to become the main demand of an executive’s time. Too many meetings always bespeak poor structure of jobs and the wrong organizational components. Too many meetings signify that work that should be in one job or one component is spread over several jobs or several components. They signify that responsibility is diffused and that information is not addressed to the people who need it.”

— Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive

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