Hermie Cartoon: Return of the Status Meeting

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When Your Team Feels More Undead Than Alive

If your team groans at the sound of “Let’s have another quick status meeting,” you might not end up leading a productive meeting… you might be summoning the undead.

In our latest Hermie the HR Hermit Crab comic, in the spirit of Halloween, Hermie faces one of his greatest fears: ANOTHER Friday Status Meeting. Surrounded by coffee-clutching coworkers and donut-deprived rodents, the team looks less “highly engaged” and more “fresh from the grave.” Their eyes glaze over as Hermie looks on in terror at his disgusted coworkers.

Sound familiar?

Meetings That Drain Rather Than Drive

According to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, many meetings feel like a time drain: they divert focus, interrupt deep work, and often fail to produce real value. Once leaders set up meetings(especially recurring ones), they rarely revisit whether that one could deem that conference worthwhile. In other words, people attend because they have it on the calendar, not because it provides the best way to get work done. Studies cited in Dr. Grant’s podcast that too many teams mistake activity for progress, filling calendars with habitual gatherings that rarely move the needle.

The result?

• Employees feel zombified by redundant updates.
• Innovation stalls under the weight of over-coordination.
• Engagement plummets because purpose-poor meetings replace meaningful work.

Grant’s advice gives this simple yet radical advice: treat meetings like any other resource, with intention and scarcity.

Ask These Questions

Before calling a meeting, ask:

1. What decision must be made? If it’s purely informational, try an email, shared doc, or Slack update instead.
2. Who truly needs to be there? Limit attendance to decision-makers or key contributors. The more voices in the room, the longer it takes to dig out of the grave.
3. What’s the desired outcome? Each meeting should end with clear actions, owners, and next steps. Otherwise, you’re just collecting digital cobwebs.

Shorter meetings, fewer attendees, clearer purpose could reduce the chance of a zombie apocalypse in the workplace. A purposeful meeting should create energy, not consume it. When teams leave with alignment and momentum, the meeting becomes a catalyst instead of a coffin.

Bury Bad Habits

If your recurring status meetings feel eternally life-draining, here are a few ways to resurrect them:

• 🕒 Shorten the duration. Try a 15-minute stand-up instead of an hour-long ritual.
• 🧾 Send pre-reads. Let people absorb context ahead of time so the discussion starts at a higher level.
• 🧠 Rotate facilitators. Giving different team members ownership keeps the format fresh and inclusive.
• 💬 End with accountability. Capture decisions and deadlines immediately—before everyone shuffles back to their inboxes.

When you respect people’s time, you show respect for their contribution. And that’s how you revive engagement.

Bringing meetings back to life

Hermie’s workplace may be full of sleepy critters, but even he knows that effective communication keeps a team alive and well. We shouldn’t strive to eliminate meetings; they serve important functions for communication across rich channels. However, we must ensure they serve a real purpose: connection, collaboration, or problem-solving.

So before scheduling your next “Status of the Status Meeting,” pause and ask yourself: Is this truly needed, or am I just afraid of silence in the calendar? If it’s the latter, it’s time to stake that meeting through the heart and let that slot on the shared calendar rest in productive peace, until there’s something worth rising for.

Take the Culture Scorecard

Does your organization struggle with meetings that drain productivity and morale? Take our Workplace Culture Scorecard to see where your communication and collaboration habits might be killing creativity, and learn how to bring your culture back to life.

Click Here to Take the Scorecard.

Also, get Hermie’s new book: Hermie the HR Hermit Crab – Out of the Loop, Into the Fire or HR Hung Out to Dry.

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