Across industries, company sizes, and time zones, the same six people show up to every meeting with the same behaviours, the same energy, and the same remarkable ability to consume a room's collective time while producing nothing of value.

Somewhere in your company right now, an email chain is in its third week of life. It began normally. One question. A reasonable one was sent to a team of six on Wednesday morning with the subject line: ‘’Perspectives on this?’’ Six people shared their ideas, thoughts and contexts with 400-word responses that raised three new questions without answering the original question. Two people replied with PDF documents, and someone replied to the PDFs, noting changes that had to be