Business leaders spend hours each week in meetings. Few stop to measure the return on that time. Evan Unger does. As a leadership strategist with decades of experience in corporate facilitation, he frames meetings not as rituals, but as performance indicators.
The numbers raise eyebrows. The average senior executive devotes nearly half of their week to meetings. Most rate their effectiveness at 50% or below. Across the U.S., unnecessary or mismanaged meetings cost companies up to $399 billion annually.
Unger views this not as a time management problem, but as a failure of decision infrastructure. “Meetings show the health of your leadership culture,” he explains. “Poor meetings signal poor alignment.”
His solution: redesign the mechanics of collaboration. Unger trains teams using a five-point framework called POPRA®: Purpose, Objectives, Process, Roles, and Agreements. Every meeting begins with clear expectations. Who needs to be in the room? What outcome defines success? How will the group operate?
The method draws inspiration from project launches and aviation. Takeoff, Unger says, makes or breaks the flight. “When meetings launch without clarity, they burn energy without producing momentum.”
This isn’t just theory. Unger’s consulting firm has deployed POPRA® within Fortune 500 companies, scaling across departments and geographic divisions. The result: faster execution, fewer misunderstandings, and stronger cross-functional alignment.
He encourages executives to audit their own calendars. “Remove any meeting where you can’t answer two questions: Why are we here? What are we supposed to accomplish?”
Unger emphasizes that this shift benefits more than productivity. It changes culture. When teams see their time respected, engagement follows. When decisions move faster, morale rises.
Beyond large corporations, even small and mid-sized businesses benefit from meeting reform. Unger finds that teams working under tight budgets and limited staffing gain disproportionately when time is structured properly. The improvements touch every layer of the company—from frontline workers to executive leadership.
Companies build strategy off-site, but execute in meetings. “If your meetings don’t work, your strategy doesn’t scale,” Unger says. Leaders looking for a competitive edge don’t need more tech or headcount. They need to stop wasting time.
