This is the crux of the problem. Is there an agenda that leads to a concrete result and is it the right set of participants? Too often, people turn a 10 minute meeting into an hour by just socializing or talking about things that only 2 people in the 10 care about or need to know. This is what annoys me about Slack's "we remove all meetings and email" approach. You can have no full meetings using Slack, instead you invite everyone to a channel and have 100 micro-meetings of a minute all day long that constantly interrupt your flow and could be solved easily with one short 15 minute meeting.

The problem is lack of good communication skills. Whether it is inability to write concise emails that have clear actionable tasks or resolution or having agenda for meetings and someone who will force the meeting forward. The other thing that drives this is managers (project, product, technical) who feel they must know everything about everything related to the project. Lack of clear roles and job descriptions exacerbates this issue and you end up with a lot of people only interested in job preservation.