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Dee Agarwal shares a practical reset for modern meetings, showing leaders how to cut unnecessary calls, right-size participation, and make collaboration purposeful, focused, and outcome-driven.
ATLANTA, GA, 18th February 2026, ZEX PR WIRE, Meetings were once the backbone of collaboration. Somewhere along the way, they became a source of frustration. Calendars filled up, agendas blurred, and outcomes grew harder to pinpoint. According to meeting research cited by Flowtrace, Harvard Business Review reports that 71 percent of senior executives view meetings as unproductive and inefficient, while Atlassian has found that 80 percent of employees believe they would be more productive if they spent less time in them. For business strategist and entrepreneur Deepak “Dee” Agarwal, the problem is not meetings themselves, but how casually organizations let them multiply without intention.
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“Meetings should exist to move something forward,” Dee Agarwal says. “When they stop doing that, they quietly become a tax on everyone’s focus.”
Dee Agarwal’s approach to streamlining collaboration starts with a reset of assumptions. Instead of asking how to make meetings more efficient, the first question should be whether the meeting is needed at all. Too often, meetings become placeholders for uncertainty or a substitute for clear ownership. The result is a room full of people waiting for alignment that never quite arrives.
According to Dee Agarwal, clarity is the missing ingredient. “If no one can articulate the decision that needs to be made, or the problem that needs to be solved, then the meeting is already off track,” he says. “You cannot collaborate effectively without knowing what collaboration is supposed to produce.”
One of Dee Agarwal’s core recommendations is to separate communication from collaboration. Not every update requires discussion, and not every discussion requires a room full of people. Written updates, shared documents, and asynchronous check-ins can often replace meetings that exist solely to distribute information.
“When meetings are used just to tell people things, you lose the chance to use that time for actual thinking,” Dee Agarwal explains. “Collaboration should be reserved for moments where multiple perspectives genuinely change the outcome.”
For the meetings that remain, Dee Agarwal emphasizes structure over spontaneity. That does not mean rigid scripts or overly formal processes. It means entering the room with intention. A clear objective, a defined set of participants, and an understanding of what will happen once the meeting ends.
“People should know why they are there and what will be different because they showed up,” he says. “If the answer is nothing, that is a signal worth paying attention to.”
Another pillar of Dee Agarwal’s approach is right-sizing participation. As teams grow, meetings often expand by default. Invitations are added “just in case,” and suddenly decision-making slows under its own weight. Dee Agarwal encourages leaders to be more deliberate.
“Collaboration does not mean inclusion at every step,” he notes. “It means bringing in the right voices at the right moments. That requires trust, not just transparency.”
This selectivity also helps address one of the most common meeting frustrations: the feeling of being talked at rather than listened to. Smaller groups create space for deeper engagement and reduce the performative dynamics that can emerge in larger settings.
Time boundaries matter as well. Dee Agarwal cautions against treating meeting length as a formality. A 60-minute default can unintentionally signal that time is abundant when it is not. Shorter meetings force prioritization and sharper thinking.
“When you know you only have 25 minutes, the conversation changes,” Dee Agarwal says. “You get to the point faster. You listen more closely. You make decisions instead of circling them.”
Perhaps most importantly, Dee Agarwal frames meeting reform as a cultural issue rather than a productivity hack. Streamlining collaboration requires leaders to model restraint and respect for attention. Canceling a meeting can be as powerful a signal as calling one.
“People take cues from what leaders protect,” he explains. “If leaders protect focus, others feel permission to do the same.”
The meeting reset, as Dee Agarwal describes it, is not about eliminating collaboration. It is about restoring its value. When meetings are purposeful, selective, and outcome-driven, they stop feeling like interruptions and start functioning as tools.
“Collaboration works best when it is treated as a resource,” Dee Agarwal says. “Something you invest in carefully, not something you spend without thinking.”
In an environment where attention is increasingly fragmented, that mindset shift may be the most meaningful reset of all.
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Article Gaze journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.