HR said all meeting requests must include a detailed agenda "so people can prepare properly." I complied.

Our HR business partner sent a company-wide email last quarter saying that going forward, all calendar invites must include a written agenda with clear talking points. The stated reason was that too many people were showing up to meetings unprepared, and this would fix it. Fine. Reasonable, even I took it seriously.

My one-on-ones with my direct reports now have agendas. My check-ins with stakeholders have agendas. The fifteen-minute sync I do on Thursdays with one colleague to go over a shared tracker has an agenda. I write them properly, bullet points, estimated time per item, any pre-read materials linked.

The agendas started taking me longer to write than the meetings themselves.

My Thursday sync has a standing agenda that now runs to about half a page. It covers things like "review cells B4 through B17 for status updates (3 min)" and "flag any blockers from the previous week (2 min)" and "confirm alignment on next steps (2 min)." My colleague and I spend the actual meeting mostly just confirming that nothing has changed since I wrote the agenda.

HR scheduled a 30-minute meeting two weeks ago to "touch base" with my manager and me about workload. I replied asking for an agenda so I could prepare properly, as per the policy. There was a pause of about three days, then I got an agenda that said "general check-in - 30 min."

I replied asking if they could break that into specific talking points so I could prepare properly.

The meeting got cancelled. We're doing an email thread instead.