The Calendar as Crown: Why Meetings Are a Status Object

The stale air in Conference Room 9 felt like a drill boring into my skull. The fluorescent hummed above, a low, persistent drone, punctuated only by the staccato clicks of 19 keyboards. It was a 'strategic alignment' meeting, two hours booked, with 19 people crammed around a too-small table, or perched on chairs along the wall. I looked around. Seven people, at a minimum, were silently typing on their laptops, answering emails from the meeting they were in before this one. Perhaps drafting replies for the meeting after. Only two were speaking, one of them the agenda-setter, reading from slides that had been circulated 49 minutes before.

It's a scene replayed daily, globally, in countless organizations. We dutifully attend, we nod, we occasionally contribute a pre-vetted soundbite. We tell ourselves we're here to make decisions, to collaborate, to move projects forward. That's a comforting lie, a narrative we cling to because the truth is far more unsettling: in most large companies, these gatherings are not primarily about making decisions. They are about performing importance. They are about defending political turf. And, most powerfully, they are about diffusing accountability. Your calendar isn't a map of the workflow; it's a detailed, color-coded diagram of the power structure, a testament to who is deemed important enough to *be* present.

I remember early in my career, perhaps 9 years ago, I was convinced that meetings were simply broken. I spent countless hours, probably 99 of them, researching methodologies, designing elaborate agenda templates, and advocating for strict timeboxing. I even tried to implement a 'no laptop' rule once. How naive. I genuinely believed that if we just had the *right* process, the *right* tools, things would change. I thought the problem was inefficiency. But the real problem wasn't a lack of productivity; it was a perversion of purpose. The meetings weren't failing; they were succeeding spectacularly at their unstated, underlying function.

The Performance of Importance

Adrian T., my old debate coach, understood this kind of performance. He wasn't a corporate guy, not by a long shot. He used to say, "The point isn't to win the argument; it's to control the narrative." Adrian could dissect a speaker's unspoken motives in 39 seconds flat. He taught us to look beyond the words, to the power dynamics at play, the subtle tells of insecurity, the audacious displays of dominance. He wouldn't have lasted 9 minutes in these corporate circuses. He'd identify the real game being played - the subtle maneuvers, the unspoken alliances, the carefully orchestrated displays of 'busy-ness' - and frankly, he'd find it all dreadfully boring. What we do in these rooms isn't about logic; it's about optics. It's about being seen in the right room, with the right people, at the right time.

This phenomenon reveals a deeper truth: many organizations inadvertently value presence over productivity. The employees with the most jammed calendars, the ones seen darting between Conference Room 9 and the next executive briefing, are often perceived as the most vital. The ones who quietly produce, who decline meetings to focus on deep work, sometimes struggle for visibility. The unspoken reward system is clear: the most rewarded employees are not necessarily those who produce the most, but those who are observed occupying the most important rooms. It's a performance art where attendance is the ultimate currency, and the calendar, with its endless back-to-back entries, becomes a tangible symbol of one's perceived value.

It reminds me of a peculiar sight from 9 years back, on a driving trip. I saw a man, meticulously polishing his brand-new luxury car in the pouring rain, right in front of his neighbor's house. The utility was zero, perhaps even negative; the car was getting soaked even as he wiped it. But the message? Crystal clear. Pure performance, zero utility. Just like our 'strategic alignment' meetings, or the dreaded 'synergy sessions' that promise a deep dive but deliver only surface ripples. They are not about the rain; they are about the act of washing, the display for an imagined audience. These meetings are the corporate equivalent of that rainy-day car wash, a public declaration of one's standing without necessarily achieving anything tangible.

Beyond Performance: Enduring Value

But what if status didn't have to be performed? What if it could simply *be*? This is where the distinction lies between the fleeting, performative status of meeting attendance and the enduring, genuine symbols of accomplishment. While the corporate world often offers only an ephemeral projection of success through its endless meeting cycles, there are avenues for acknowledging real, tangible achievement. For those who understand that true accomplishment deserves a genuine mark, something that speaks to their drive and success in a substantive way, a finely crafted object can serve as that constant reminder. Much like the precise engineering and timeless design found in a luxury timepiece from cardiwan, it's a statement not of fleeting presence, but of lasting value, a reward for the battles won far away from the fluorescent glare of the boardroom.

And why are these meetings so stubbornly resilient? Part of it is fear. Fear of being out of the loop. Fear of being excluded. Fear of missing a critical piece of information that might, in turn, make *you* seem less important or knowledgeable. There's also the powerful allure of diffusing accountability. When 19 people are in the room, the responsibility for a potentially risky decision is spread thin. No one wants to be the solitary decision-maker on a venture that might fail. Blame becomes an amorphous cloud, rather than a pinpoint target. The collective presence acts as a shield, a buffer against individual culpability, making a two-hour performative meeting a small price to pay for peace of mind, even if that peace comes at a staggering cost to productivity.

The Catch-29 of Corporate Life

I'll admit, I complain about these meetings, yet I'm still there, aren't I? I've been in 9 this week alone. It's a contradiction I live with, a testament to how deeply ingrained this system is. You opt out, you risk being deemed "not a team player." You become an island, and in the corporate sea, islands often get overlooked. It's a Catch-29 situation: you know it's unproductive, but the cost of not participating feels higher than the cost of sitting through it. Even executives, many of whom are undoubtedly aware of this charade, perpetuate it. For them, these meetings aren't just about making decisions; they're vital organs for gauging the political temperature, for reading the room in real time, not for what's said, but for what's left unsaid, for the subtle shifts in power. It's a different kind of work, an unspoken one, performed under the guise of an agenda.

Consider the sheer, staggering cost. If the average salary of those 19 attendees is, say, $99 an hour, that two-hour meeting just burned nearly $3,762. Multiply that by 9 such meetings a week across a large organization, and you're talking about millions of dollars annually, simply for people to silently type emails or present pre-digested slides. It's an unsustainable model, yet it persists. We're paying top dollar for attention, not for output. We're investing in the *appearance* of collaboration, not its genuine substance.

A New Measure of Worth

What if, instead, we truly valued output over optics? What would that company look like? Probably a lot quieter, with fewer calendars jammed to their digital limits, more actual creation unfolding, and a deeper respect for focused, uninterrupted work. It would foster a different kind of status, one earned through demonstrable impact, through tangible results, not merely observed through prolonged presence. Imagine a world where your most valuable asset wasn't your packed calendar, but the empty space within it, a canvas for true work to happen. This space, then, would become the ultimate symbol of importance, representing not the performance of work, but its quiet, powerful achievement.

What truly defines your worth?