Malana VanTyler
Fixing leadership team meetings that break companies
Meetings should move your business forward, but many don’t. Instead, they stall decisions, drain energy, and cause confusion. It’s not the meeting itself or the time spent; it’s leadership that determines their effectiveness. This begs the question of how to fix bad meetings. Entrepreneur, author, and Professional EOS ImplementerKris Snyder provides an answer in his book Meetings Kinda Suck, part of the EOS Impact Library.
The Real Cost of Bad Meeting Culture
Across industries, poor meeting culture yields the same outcomes. Teams lose focus. Accountability drops. Progress slows. Leaders react instead of executing.
Snyder has seen this firsthand through more than 400 coaching sessions with leadership teams. This is not a theory. It is repeated exposure to the same failure patterns across companies, as they try to grow.
Many leaders think they are responsive by constantly shifting direction. Snyder operated this way, caught in a loop of urgency without follow-through, which creates chaos disguised as action. “Bad meetings are not a time problem. They are a leadership problem. The meeting is not broken. The person running it is,” Snyder says.
The fix is structure and discipline. EOS Meetings, the Level 10 Meeting, Rocks, and Scorecards build a repeatable rhythm. Platforms like Ninety.io help scale it. But tools alone aren’t enough. Leadership behavior must change. When used well, these tools make meetings more productive, increase accountability, and deliver quicker results.
From Operator to Coach to Builder
Kris Snyder’s journey began before he became an EOS Implementer. He built Vox Mobile from the ground up, scaling it to over 200 employees before a successful exit. Afterward, he founded Impact Architects to help business owners implement lasting systems.
His perspective comes from being in the seat, not advising from the outside. That is why he describes his work as a painkiller. “I position what I do as a painkiller, not a vitamin. This book solves an urgent problem.”
He coaches leadership meetings with urgency. The goal is not perfection, but progress this week. As he puts it, “The week is the unit of work. You win the week, or you don’t.”
A Practical System for Running Effective Meetings
Meetings Kinda Suck shows leaders how to fix meetings immediately. Each chapter ends with a “Meetings Suck Less Realization,” giving readers a clear next action. Readers benefit from easy steps that save time, sharpen focus, and deliver measurable improvements every week.
The EOS framework centers around the Level 10 Meeting, which features clear agendas, measurable priorities, and disciplined problem-solving through IDS. These systems improve meeting productivity and align the business.
The book includes insights from Audra Stanton, M.D., who explores why meetings fail psychologically. With a foreword by Kelly Knight, Integrator/President of EOS Worldwide, the message is clear: structure drives results, but only if leaders commit.
Why This Approach Works in Real Companies
Snyder’s work at Impact Architects and Ninety.io offers a unique viewpoint. He sees how thousands of teams rate their meetings and where they struggle. Top teams are not more talented. They are more consistent.
One client he coached grew from $1 million in revenue to over $15 million after aligning on focus and execution. The shift was not a new strategy. It was disciplined leadership and better meetings.
If you want better results, treat meetings as the engine of your business, not a necessary evil. When meetings work, your entire business operating system starts working with them. When leaders commit to this idea, progress follows.