Every Meeting Ending in "TBD" Is a $10K Problem

Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, due to escalating costs, unclear business value, and inadequate risk controls, according to Gartner.

Here's what no one's talking about: The same decision-making dysfunction that's about to kill those AI projects is happening in your weekly team meetings right now.

The Real Math on Meeting Dysfunction

Let me paint you a picture from a recent client engagement:

8-person leadership meeting. Average $100/hour per person. That's $800 every time you sit down together.

They met weekly for 6 weeks about the same major deal. No decisions made. No clear action items. Just "let's revisit this next week" on repeat.

Meeting cost: $4,800
Delayed deal closure: 30 days on a $50K contract
Actual damage: $10K+ and counting

Here's where it gets worse…. The founder was always on the road, fundraising, sales calls, networking events. Every "critical decision" meeting happened with him taking Zoom calls from the back of a cab or the corner of a conference.

Half-distracted. Phone cutting out. "Sorry, can you repeat that?"

The team would spend 45 minutes discussing next steps, only to realize at minute 46 that the one person who could actually make the decision wasn't mentally present.

The result? Deals stalled. The team got frustrated. Velocity died.

The Red Flags You're Missing

If any of these sound familiar, your meeting dysfunction is costing you:

✗ No agenda sent 24 hours before the meeting
✗ No clear meeting owner who can drive decisions
✗ Zero action items captured and shared
✗ "Waiting for founder feedback" becomes your team's catchphrase
✗ People physically present but mentally checked out
✗ Previous meeting's "next steps" never get revisited

Every one of these is a leak in your operational bucket, and you better believe those leaks compound.

Here's How to Fix It (And Why AI Actually Helps)

Look, I'm not going to throw a meeting playbook at you, but there are non-negotiables:

Before the meeting:

• Agenda added to team workspace 24 hours prior (with space for team additions)

• Clear meeting leader identified in team workspace

• Previous meeting's action items reviewed

During the meeting:

• Stick to the agenda

• Capture action items in real-time

• Assign owners and deadlines before you hang up

After the meeting:

• Action items shared in your team workspace AND Slack

• Next meeting agenda starts with accountability check-in

Here's where AI actually makes sense: I teach a GPT about each recurring meeting: the purpose, attendees, and ongoing goals. Each week, I work with it to draft the agenda, incorporating what happened last time and what needs to happen next. After the meeting, I feed it the transcript and notes, and it spits back clean takeaways and tracks progress week over week.

It's not replacing human decision-making. It's making sure the humans actually make decisions and have the follow-through.

The Bottom Line

Your startup mayhem is costly, not charming.

Every meeting that ends in "TBD" is money walking out the door. Every founder who thinks they can make critical decisions from the back of an Uber is creating a bottleneck their team can't navigate around.

Companies will spend $50K on an AI agent to "streamline operations" while their team sits in $2K meetings that accomplish nothing.

Fix the meetings first. Everything else gets easier.

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If you're tired of meetings that accomplish nothing and teams that can't make decisions, here's how I can help:

Clarity Sprint (2-4 weeks): Quick diagnostic to identify where your decision-making breaks down, plus immediate fixes for your biggest operational pain points. Perfect for teams that need traction fast.

Advisory Partnership (Ongoing): Monthly strategic support for founders who want to build better systems but need an experienced operator as a thought partner. Think of it as operational therapy without the full-time commitment.

Embedded Fractional COO (3-12 months): I become your operational backbone, sitting inside your team to fix the handoffs, align the departments, and build the decision-making clarity that makes everything else possible—including successful AI implementation.

The companies that succeed with AI agents aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones with the clearest operations.

Want to see which option fits your chaos? Dm me or shoot me an email Katie@riseandoptimize.com.