Yep exactly. If you go into a meeting and you haven't talked to at least a few of the people there about the topic beforehand, IME it's not going to be a productive meeting. I usually start with getting feedback from one or two subject matter experts, building consensus with them, and then slowly expand my circle of people I get feedback from, until we have "the big meeting". Having a "big meeting" with no pre-established context usually wastes everyone's time.
Itβs easy to criticize, but the reality is that making decision with and motivating large groups of people involves tradeoffs that lead to theoretically suboptimal outcomes.
