  Ineffective meetings due to unclear goals are major obstacles to
productivity, yet support for intentionality is surprisingly scant in our
meeting and allied workflow technologies. To design for intentionality, we need
to understand workers' attitudes and practices around goals. We interviewed 21
employees of a global technology company and identified contrasting mental
models of meeting goals: meetings as a means to an end, and meetings as an end
in themselves. We explore how these mental models impact how meeting goals
arise, goal prioritization, obstacles to considering goals, and how lack of
alignment around goals may create tension between organizers and attendees. We
highlight the challenges in balancing preparation, constraining scope, and
clear outcomes, with the need for intentional adaptability and discovery in
meetings. Our findings have implications for designing systems which increase
effectiveness in meetings by catalyzing intentionality and reducing tension in
the organisation of meetings.
