Is Your Team Doing Fake Work? (And Are You Paying for It?)

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In short: fake work is effort that looks busy but changes nothing. Updates nobody uses. Reports nobody reads. Meetings with no decision at the end. The fix isn't more meetings or more people. It's asking four questions before any regular meeting goes back in the calendar: What is it for? Who brings what? What happens afterwards? How do you want people to feel when they leave?

It's Thursday night. The kitchen table is covered in notes and your laptop is glowing. You're building slides for tomorrow's meeting, begrudgingly.

This meeting happens every month. It's in the calendar, and all week it's been kicked down the road. The deck, the notes, the charts, the reports. All of it pulled together, ready to send off into the ether (well, that's how it feels).

And you know from experience that if you don't bring something, nobody will. Which means blank faces, and people with one eye on their emails, their phones or the door (if it's a team working day).

Tomorrow you'll present it. People will nod. Someone will say, "Great, thanks for pulling that together." And then nothing happens. Again.

If that sounds familiar, you're not imagining it. You've been doing fake work. And so has everyone in that room.

What fake work looks like

Fake work is effort that feels like progress but doesn't move anything forward. You'll probably recognise some of these:

• The one to one where you read a spreadsheet out line by line, and very little has changed since the last one.
• The team meeting that repeats everything people said in their one to ones the day before.
• The report you build every month that nobody has ever said they use.
• The "ideas session" where the boss asks for ideas and gets silence.

None of this is laziness. Most of it starts with good intentions. Someone wanted visibility. Someone wanted to feel on top of things. Then the meeting stayed long after the reason for it left.

Everywhere I've been, there's been fake work. Hundreds of hours of it. Every single business.

Business owners and managers get used to the event, and nobody actually challenges it, steps back and looks at the purpose of it. And I don't just mean the work. What do you actually want to happen for the people attending? How do you want them to leave the meeting? Excited, energised and focused? Or drained, checked out and despondent?

A real story (details changed)

Once upon a time there was a senior manager I mentor. Good at her job, well respected, and the person who always turns up prepared.

Every fortnight she had a team meeting and a one to one with her boss. More often than not, she said the same things in both.

On top of that, a regular review meeting kept appearing in the calendar. No agenda. No request for anything. So she spent the best part of a week building a presentation anyway, because she couldn't face walking in empty handed. Nobody else brought a thing.

One day she said to me, "I feel like I'm doing all the work for a meeting nobody can explain the point of."

You could hear the frustration. And a bit of guilt for even saying it out loud.

Because of that, we stopped talking about how to make her presentation better. We started asking what the meeting was actually for.

Because of that, she realised she'd been answering a question nobody had asked.

Until finally, she had a plan. Go to her boss with a proposal, not a complaint. Here's what I think this meeting is for. Here's what I'll bring. Here's what others need to bring. What would you change?

It's in these moments that you get to shape the culture and take ownership of it. Giving feedback, asking why, and getting to a point of purpose.

Why this matters more than ever right now

Two numbers worth knowing.

69% of UK businesses say labour costs are their biggest price pressure right now (British Chambers of Commerce, Q3 2026, over 4,300 firms surveyed). Your team's time is the most expensive thing you buy.

82% of UK managers were promoted without any formal training in managing people (Chartered Management Institute, 2026). Nobody showed them how to run a meeting with a purpose. So they copy the meetings they used to sit in. And plenty of those were fake work too.

Picture this. Five people. One hour. Every fortnight. That's 130 hours of paid time a year. If nobody acts on what gets said, or worse, the room walks out drained and demoralised, you've paid for 130 hours of theatre.

If you run the business: "I ask for ideas and get blank faces"

You might be reading this thinking, "Hang on. I'd love my managers to tell me what's pointless. I ask for ideas all the time."

I hear that a lot.

Here's the thing. "What are your ideas?" is a huge question. To a tired or switched off manager, it feels like a test they haven't revised for. So they go quiet, or steer the conversation somewhere safer.

Make the question smaller:

• "What stood out to you most in these numbers?"
• "What's one thing we could stop doing?"
• "Which of our meetings would you miss least?"

Then stop talking. Sit in the silence, even when it's uncomfortable. If they're talking for 60 to 70% of the meeting, you're doing it right.

You can't ask your team to step up if you never step back.

The four question meeting test

Before any regular meeting goes back in the calendar, ask:

1. What is this meeting for?

Write it in one sentence. If you can't, nobody in the room knows either.

2. Who needs to bring what?

Name the person and the thing. If one person is doing all the preparation, that's your sign.

3. What happens afterwards, and who owns it?

If the honest answer is "nothing", it isn't a meeting. It's an email.

4. How do you want the team to feel afterwards?

Inspired, excited, focused? Or flat, drained and reaching for their phones? People forget the slides. They remember how the meeting made them feel.

Sit through enough meetings where nothing changes and people learn that speaking up is pointless, so they stop. That quiet isn't agreement. It's people switching off. Gallup's research found managers account for at least 70% of the difference in how engaged a team is, and meetings are where your team sees how you manage most often.

So decide the feeling first, then shape the meeting to create it. Open with a win. Ask one small question. Finish with clear names against clear actions.

Can't answer all four? You've got three options: fix it, shrink it or cancel it.

Shrinking it might mean fewer people, less often, half the time, or a short written update everyone reads beforehand so the meeting is only for decisions.

Try it this week. Open your calendar. Pick your three most regular meetings. Run each one through the four questions. It takes ten minutes, and you'll feel the difference by Friday.

If you're the manager stuck in the meeting

You don't need permission to raise it. You need a proposal.

Try something like this:

"I've noticed I've brought the same information to the last two meetings. I don't want to waste anyone's time. Here's what I think would make this more useful for all of us. What would you change?"

That isn't moaning. That's managing up. It's what senior people do.

Want to be seen as stepping up? Stop waiting to be asked. Bring the idea.

Picture next month

Imagine Monday morning. There are two fewer meetings in your calendar. The one you kept ends with three names next to three actions. You hear someone say, "I'll have that to you by Thursday," and you believe them.

That's the hour you get back. That's the weight off your shoulders.

If nobody acts on it, it wasn't work. It was theatre.

If work keeps landing back on your desk once the meeting's over, read Why Does Everything End Up Back on Your Desk? And if it's decisions rather than jobs, try Why does every decision still come back to me? You can find out more about how I work with owners and their managers on my leadership coaching and manager mentoring page.

Your questions answered

What is fake work?

Fake work is activity that looks productive but doesn't move the business forward. Common examples are status meetings nobody acts on, reports nobody reads and updates that repeat what people already know.

How do I know if a meeting is a waste of time?

Ask four questions. What is it for? Who needs to bring what? What happens afterwards, and who owns it? How do you want people to feel when they leave? If you can't answer all four, fix the meeting, shrink it or cancel it.

How do I stop one to ones turning into status updates?

Move the updates into a short written report sent beforehand. Then use the one to one for what's on the person's mind, what's blocking them and what support they need. Open with a question like "What's front of mind for you this week?"

How do I tell my boss a meeting isn't working?

Bring a proposal, not a complaint. Say what you've noticed, suggest what would make it more useful and ask what they would change. It shows you're thinking about the business, not just your own diary.

Why do small businesses end up with so much fake work?

Most managers were promoted for being good at their job, not trained to run meetings or lead people. So meetings get copied from habit rather than designed with a purpose, and nobody stops to ask whether they still earn their place.