> A short weekly standing meeting […] is actually a powerful tool.

The problem is they never stay short, they never stay on topic, they always expand beyond one a week.

Then managers want everybody to say something, so they feel in the know and in control, even when most of the time they are not. So it devolves into everybody just saying something useless to make the manager happy, and nobody listening anymore, because they know that 90% of what is said is just noise.