Are your meetings speeding up or slowing down R&D progress?
Meeting Series: Part 1
In R&D, meetings are everywhere. And they’re often the first thing people bring up when we ask what’s getting in the way of doing great work: “We have too many meetings.”
Instead of accelerating action, meetings often drain energy and pull scientists, clinicians, R&D professionals and leaders away from deep thinking and critical decisions right when we need both the most.
That’s why we’re dedicating this next series to one of the most underused levers of team performance: meetings. Because it’s not just a calendar problem. It’s a systems problem. And it’s one that can be fixed!
In the coming articles, we’ll explore:
How to engage your team to assess the way they meet and communicate
How to define meeting rhythms that match your work and outcomes
Why every meeting needs a facilitator (yes, every one!) and how to do it effectively
What it looks like when everyone in the room is engaged and contributing
What We Often See
Across R&D, we hear it over and over again: “I’m in meetings all day (and some evenings!) and still can’t get my actual work done.”
The data backs it up. Employees report that 71% of their meetings are unproductive, 73% admit to multitasking and 64% say meetings keep them from doing deep work.
In R&D, this is amplified by complexity. Teams are matrixed, global, and deeply specialized. Work is interconnected. The stakes are high. Yet meetings often lack purpose, clarity, or follow-through. Here’s what we often see:
Meetings become the default and overused practice, not because they’re always needed, but because there are no clear pathways or agreements for how communication should flow, how decisions get made, or how work progresses. So everything gets a meeting.
Many meetings are updates in disguise, taking time but adding little value.
The right people aren’t present or too many people are in the virtual “room”, so there’s no clarity on who’s accountable or even the decision maker.
Discussions drift without focus, structure, or equitable participation.
There’s no breathing room left for deep work, work coordination, or even thinking.
And here’s the deeper truth: meetings are often the most visible signal of a teaming system that is or isn’t working. When meetings feel misaligned, unproductive or disengaged, they reflect real challenges in how the team operates day to day.
The cost isn’t just time. It’s energy. And ultimately, it’s speed. R&D progress slows not because of talent gaps, but because the system isn’t designed to help that talent thrive.
A Different Way to Meet that is Strategic
At Plumtree, we help R&D teams redesign their meeting systems to reflect the work they’re actually doing together with the pace and pressure they’re operating under. That means:
Establishing meeting rhythms that align with strategy, decision-making, execution and delivery and not just the calendar.
Defining clear roles and accountabilities, including the facilitator, who owns the flow, keeps the group focused, and ensures outcomes are achieved.
Embedding flexibility so teams can pivot when science, strategy, or context shifts.
Using meetings to build capability - turning them into working labs for teaming, problem-solving, cross-functional learning and shared ownership.
This isn’t about trimming meetings for efficiency’s sake. It’s about designing them as a strategic tool to unlock clarity, progress, and connection, especially when the work is complex and cross-functional.
The Impact
When leaders treat meetings as part of the teaming system, the impact is transformative.
Team members reclaim time for deep thinking
Teams align faster and stay aligned through complex decision cycles.
Meetings become places where work actually gets done, not just discussed.
And perhaps most importantly, people feel energized, not drained.
A well-run meeting can foster a feeling of psychological safety, allowing team members to be candid about risks, challenges, and new ideas while increasing engagement and shared sense of purpose. This, in turn, can help accelerate patient-centric outcomes. In fact, one team we worked with experienced a 700% increase in eligibility screenings in 12 weeks as a result of redesigning their meetings!
What About You?
Take a look at your own meeting load. How much of it is designed with intention?
Do your meetings have a clear rhythm, role, and purpose?
Are they structured to reflect how your team actually needs to work?
Are they serving as accelerators or just updates with only a few people talking?
In our next article, we’ll share ideas on how to engage your team to answer these questions and then jumpstart action.
We’d love to hear your reflections. And if you notice opportunities to improve the way your team works, let’s talk. Plumtree is here to help you and your team work at the speed of science.
