This is all even worse if you try to carry over the same process to remote work. I feel like virtual meetings increase the emphasis on slides too much. In person, the presenter can be up front, gesturing, pointing, really bringing animation to the slides. In virtual meetings it's just the screen share of the slide and a talking head. It's a horribly unengaging experience.
The point isn't to come completely informed. Just enough to prepare some thoughts and questions.
If only. Bosses can really only mess things up. Leadership sets expectations, but employees as a group have to keep each other in check, and propagate the culture to new hires as they come on board, or things deflate pretty quickly.
More and more I see meetings that stop for 30s~1min because the presenter raised a point that hit us and we take a few moments to digest/double check. On the other end basic reporting meetings got a lot shorter.
Basically, if there is nothing to be said, it just ends up with that unengaging, really boring feeling. If there was any interest in the subject, time goes faster as we’re also checking a lot in the background. I kinda see the default boringness as a feature really.