The Reality Check Most Managers Need 

Here's something uncomfortable: if you can't have regular coaching conversations with your team members, you're probably not ready to be managing people.

Management isn't about delegating tasks and checking completion. It's about developing capabilities, removing obstacles, and creating conditions where good people can do their best work.

If your primary interaction with team members happens during formal performance reviews, you're not managing – you're just administering. And your best employees will eventually find managers who actually invest in their development.

The good news is that most people want to improve at their jobs. They want to contribute meaningfully, learn new things, and advance their careers. They just need managers who can help them figure out how.

Making It Stick

The biggest challenge isn't designing better performance management – it's getting managers to actually use it consistently.

Change the systems all you want, but if your supervisors aren't comfortable with ongoing coaching conversations, nothing improves. This is where most performance management overhauls fail. They focus on processes instead of people.

Start with management training that develops actual coaching skills. Not theoretical frameworks about motivation and engagement, but practical techniques for giving feedback, setting expectations, and supporting development.

The warehouse operation in Geelong that I mentioned got this right by pairing experienced supervisors with newer managers for peer coaching. No formal mentoring program, just practical support from people who'd figured out how to have these conversations effectively.

Because at the end of the day, performance management isn't about forms or ratings or annual cycles. It's about helping good people become better at work they actually care about.

Everything else is just paperwork.

The Four Types of Meeting That Are Killing Your Business

Not all meetings are evil. Some serve genuine purposes. But most fall into four categories that should make any sensible business person want to throw their laptop out the window.

Status Update Circuses You know these. Everyone sits around a table and reports what they've been working on. No decisions get made, no problems get solved, no coordination happens. Just verbal reporting of information that could be shared in a two-minute email.

I worked with a tech startup in Adelaide where the weekly "all-hands" meeting ran for 90 minutes every Monday morning. Ninety minutes of people saying things like "I'm still working on the client proposal" and "The budget review is progressing well." Groundbreaking stuff.

Decision-Avoidance Sessions Meetings where the obvious solution is discussed endlessly instead of being implemented. Usually because someone wants to feel like they're being consultative, or because the person with authority is afraid to make a call.

Information Dumps PowerPoint presentations where someone shares information they could have emailed, followed by polite nodding from people who are thinking about their actual work. These often masquerade as "training sessions" or "updates from management."

Meeting About Meetings The meta-meetings where people discuss why previous meetings weren't effective, leading to decisions about scheduling more meetings to fix the meeting problem. I wish I was making this up.

What Good Communication Actually Looks Like

The companies I work with that have their act together use meetings strategically, not habitually. They've figured out that different types of communication serve different purposes.

Quick Decisions: Phone calls or chat messages Complex Problem-Solving: Small group working sessions with clear outcomes Information Sharing: Written updates with optional discussion time Team Alignment: Brief, focused check-ins with specific agendas Strategic Planning: Dedicated workshops with external facilitators and proper preparation

Notice what's missing? Weekly status meetings, monthly all-hands presentations, and standing meetings that exist because "we've always done them."

The logistics company in Perth I mentioned earlier cut their meeting time by 78% using simple principles: every meeting needs a clear purpose, defined outcomes, and specific decisions to be made. If it doesn't meet those criteria, it doesn't happen.

Their productivity increased immediately. Not because people worked longer hours, but because they could actually focus on work instead of talking about work.

The Australian Context (And Why We're Particularly Bad at This)

We've got a cultural problem in Australia where "having a chat" is often confused with making progress. Don't get me wrong – I love our collaborative culture and informal communication style. But somewhere along the way, we started thinking that every workplace conversation needs to happen in a formal meeting structure.

I see this constantly in Brisbane offices where "quick catch-ups" turn into hour-long discussions that could have been resolved in five minutes. Or Melbourne companies where every decision requires a "team meeting" even when only two people are actually involved.

Our egalitarian instincts are brilliant for building inclusive workplaces, but terrible for efficient decision-making. We're so worried about leaving people out that we include everyone in everything, regardless of whether they need to be involved.

The mining company in Perth that I worked with had this exact problem. Engineering decisions were being made in meetings with accountants, HR representatives, and marketing managers who had no relevant expertise or authority. Not because they were necessary for the decision, but because someone thought it would be "good to keep everyone informed."

Keeping people informed is important. Wasting their time in irrelevant meetings is not the way to do it.

The Real Cost of Meeting Overload

Most businesses have no idea how much meetings actually cost them. Not just the obvious salary costs of having people sit in conference rooms, but the hidden productivity impacts that happen before and after.

Context Switching Penalties Every meeting interrupts focused work time. It takes an average of 25 minutes to regain full concentration after an interruption. So a 30-minute meeting actually costs about 55 minutes of productive time per participant.

Preparation Overhead Decent people prepare for meetings. They review agendas, gather relevant information, think through potential issues. This preparation time often exceeds the meeting time itself, especially for senior staff.

Decision Fatigue Sitting through multiple meetings per day exhausts people's capacity for good decision-making. By the afternoon, even simple choices become overwhelming. This is why so many important decisions get deferred or made poorly.

Stress and Burnout Constant meetings create artificial urgency and prevent people from completing satisfying work. It's incredibly stressful to spend all day talking about tasks without ever finishing anything meaningful.

The accounting firm in Melbourne that I helped streamline their meeting culture saw sick leave drop by 31% in the first six months. Not because they changed health benefits or working conditions, but because people felt more in control of their work and less constantly frazzled.

What Actually Works (And It's Simpler Than You Think)

You don't need expensive collaboration tools or complex meeting management systems. You just need some basic principles and the discipline to stick to them.

Default to No Meeting Before scheduling any meeting, ask: "What specific decision needs to be made or problem needs to be solved?" If you can't answer clearly, don't have the meeting.

Invite Only Essential People Include only those who have authority to make decisions, unique information to contribute, or responsibility for implementation. Everyone else can get updates via email or brief written summaries.

Set Clear Time Limits Most discussions expand to fill available time. Thirty-minute meetings often accomplish more than sixty-minute ones because people focus on what actually matters.

Document Decisions and Actions Send brief follow-up messages that capture what was decided and who's responsible for what. This eliminates the need for follow-up meetings to clarify what happened.

Kill Recurring Meetings Regularly Every three months, cancel all standing meetings and reschedule only those that are still necessary. You'll be amazed how many "essential" meetings turn out to be completely optional.

The construction company in Adelaide that implemented these principles reduced meeting time by 68% while improving project delivery times by 23%. Same people, same workload, just better use of everyone's time and attention.

The Skills Nobody Teaches (But Everyone Needs)

Most managers have never been taught how to run effective meetings or make decisions efficiently. We promote people based on technical expertise, then expect them to intuitively know how to facilitate productive discussions.

Decision-Making Frameworks Simple structures for gathering input, weighing options, and making calls quickly. Not complex strategic planning models, just practical approaches for everyday business decisions.

Facilitation Techniques How to keep discussions focused, manage different personality types, and ensure everyone contributes without letting meetings drag on forever.

Conflict Resolution Many meetings become ineffective because people avoid addressing disagreements directly. Learning to handle workplace tension constructively eliminates the need for multiple follow-up meetings to revisit the same issues.

This is where effective time management training becomes crucial. Not just personal productivity techniques, but organisational efficiency skills that help teams work together without drowning in coordination overhead.