Dr Carrie Goucher — Why Meetings Are Failing Your Organisation

Dr Carrie Goucher — Why Meetings Are Failing Your OrganisationDr Carrie Goucher joins Mick to explore why meetings haven't improved in 50 years — and what we're getting fundamentally wrong. Drawing on her PhD in systems thinking and meeting culture, Carrie unpacks the hidden systems driving meeting dysfunction, from collabureaucracy to the parent-child dynamics that still dominate knowledge work.Guest: Dr Carrie Goucher — Founder of FewerFasterBolder, systems thinker specialising in meetings and collaborationDr Carrie Goucher explores why meetings haven't improved in 50 years and what organisations are getting fundamentally wrong. Drawing on her PhD in systems thinking and meeting culture and 25 years helping organisations shift from industrial-era hierarchies, Carrie unpacks the hidden systems driving meeting dysfunction. The conversation covers the historical roots of meetings — from trial by combat to Quaker decision-making architecture — and why surface-level fixes like agendas and timekeeping miss the point entirely.Topics: meetings, systems thinking, organisational design, collaboration, complexity, sensemakingHighlights

Meetings are a systems problem, not a process problem

Three dominant organisational models each create their own meeting pathology

Bees decide through quorum, not consensus — waiting for 100% agreement is organisational death

Four things: constrain meeting time, add scaffolding, handle conflict, design rhythm

The shift from parent-child to adult-to-adult relationships as the foundation for knowledge-era collaboration

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