Why Your Team Doesn’t Need Another Meeting. It Needs a System.
- kevonyawebbriley
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Some of the busiest teams have the least momentum. Your calendars are full, your meetings are recurring, but the actual progress within your projects is stalled.
If your team is constantly meeting just to “get on the same page,” you don’t need more facetime; you need a system tailored to how your team works best.
Let’s dive into how to know if your team is stuck in meeting mode and what to do instead.
You're Having Meetings to Recap Previous Meetings
If you’re meeting just to clarify what happened in another meeting, chances are your meetings aren’t as productive as you think.
In your initial kickoff meeting, everyone should walk away knowing:
Their role
Their “why”
And exactly how they’ll contribute to the project
And the keeper of this clarity is your handy-dandy Project Manager. PMs take meeting minutes, and they document responsibilities, so if someone becomes unclear about something later, they don’t have to guess or ping three people about it. They just check the system.
A great PM also asks the right questions up front:
What’s in scope?
What’s the deadline?
What’s the budget?
How are we communicating throughout the project?
What risks are we already aware of? How can we properly address them?
If these things are missing in the beginning, your project likely didn’t start on solid ground. And that shaky start is what leads to extra, unnecessary meetings later. Also, not every meeting needs the full team. Unless you're running Agile (like a Scrum team), full attendance should be rare.
There are other ways to share quick updates or solve small blockers. So, if you're having multiple meetings just to fill in gaps, your planning process probably skipped a few key details.
What a System Actually Solves
Meetings give you visibility in the moment. A good system gives you visibility all the time. The project manager is the keeper of that system and how it functions overall. You can think of each team member, whether that’s the copywriter, designer, or social media manager, as working within the canvas. The PM is there viewing the whole thing from the outside.
Sometimes people resist working with PMs because they confuse structure with micromanagement. But when you can see the bigger picture, you’re able to spot when one part of the process might be impacting another.
That’s where a PM shines: we blend all the moving parts into something seamless. When your team has a clear system in place, you get:
One source of truth for task owners and deadlines
Fewer side convos and unnecessary back-and-forths
Progress tracking without needing another call
The right system makes it easy to spot what’s blocked, what’s done, and what’s dragging, and one of the most important things systems create is shared accountability. Not just “Did you do your part?”, but “Are we all aligned on what we’re building and why it matters?”
Before You Add Another Meeting, Ask This…
Every meeting takes time, energy, and focus. So before you send out another invite, pause and ask a few things:
Can this be handled in our project system instead?
Does this require real-time discussion, or is a quick Slack chat enough?
Is this meeting going to unblock something, or just review things we already know?
Will everyone attending actually need to contribute to the conversation?
If you’re not moving the work forward, you might just be holding space for more noise. The goal isn’t to eliminate meetings altogether; it’s to make sure the ones you do have are intentional and aligned with your team’s actual progress.
Plus, if we’re always having meetings, when will the work actually get done.
Your team doesn’t need more meetings to feel aligned. They need clarity, ownership, and a system that supports their flow. When everyone knows what they’re doing, why it matters, and how their work connects to the bigger picture, that’s when things really start moving. That kind of structure is what true project managers bring to the table.
This post will also be the focus of Episode 2 of my podcast Kee to the Conversation, dropping Monday, May 5. Subscribe wherever you listen so you don’t miss it!
