So, in my example, we were having 2-3x/week 2-hour, full dev staff meetings.. without product in the room. He was a very busy man and could only grace us with his presence for 30 min every 2 weeks to basically sort the tickets we had spent 12 hours putting together and decide which he actually cared about.

Much could be accomplished more efficiently by getting product, management, and 1-2 seniors in a room for 30min to actually decide what/if plans have changed & cascade the changes accordingly.

99 times out of 100, the plan didn't change because something raised from the bottom, but because management has changed direction or users have asked for something new. Why subject 95% of the team to hour long monologues?