What Are Meetings Good For

For many people meetings are boring. Very boring. But not for extroverts like yours truly. I am convinced I am not the only one who likes meetings.

I am convinced not all meetings are a waste of time. There must be useful meetings.

Let's ask ourselves the question: what are meetings good for?

A more concise answer than the list below, I think, is: meetings are good for sharing information, bad for argument, and bad for making decisions.

Meetings are good because:

When the CEO or the department head has something important to reveal, the mere fact of calling the meeting gives an importance right away to what he has to say. The medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan? has proven. An E-mail to all employees would not have the same effect.
They give the CEO or the boss the illusion that he still speaks very well in public; that he is a good orator.
You get to meet people in the company you haven't seen for years!
You are paid to do nothing.
You can do eye-contact with a nice woman
Your patience is tested
Everyone can provide feedback instantly. We can ask questions.
It gives everyone a sense of belonging to a group, an organization.

For content about what meetings actually are good for and how to make them effective, see PatternsForEffectiveMeetings, StandUpMeeting, ScrumMeetings, SuccessfulMeeting

Actually, those pages don't tell a thing about what meetings are good for: they emphasise on making meetings effective, passing the question "effective for what?" without as much as mentioning it. They make me all the more certain that people don't actually know why meetings are held.

Just to give a real answer rather than the cynicism above:

Meetings help a group of people to come together and come to an agreement (such as what the goals are, or how they are to achieve the goals) without the lag and context-switching that comes from email tag. Real-time synchronous communication is usually the fastest communication in terms of wall time.

Meetings are a chance for the social people to "feel" useful and important.