It's an artifact of their consensus-based decision-making process (they have lots of process).
Meetings are a crucial part of obtaining and expressing consensus.
It can get pretty crazy, but they get things done.
Whenever we look at the way that another culture does stuff (not just other nations -other companies, as well), we tend to look at it through the lens of "That's not something I could do!". We need to remember that their culture is acclimated to doing things the way they do it; for better or for worse. They actually can have a difficult time, adjusting to the way we do things in the US.
We had a liaison that wanted to help things be more "agile," so our infrastructure/process guy suggested daily morning standups (you know, informal, 15-minute meetings in the morning).
He turned that into once-a-week 1-hour sit-down meetings before lunch on Fridays, with a rigorous format.
Consensus-seeking reduces variance. This is the approach to take when failure is expensive. Blindly applying this approach leads to design by committee and wasted productivity.
I will say that the Quality of the stuff this company made was staggering. Not a huge money-maker, though. Their process had levels of overhead that would have most folks on this site, huddled under their standing desks, whimpering.
Meetings are a crucial part of obtaining and expressing consensus.
It can get pretty crazy, but they get things done.
Whenever we look at the way that another culture does stuff (not just other nations -other companies, as well), we tend to look at it through the lens of "That's not something I could do!". We need to remember that their culture is acclimated to doing things the way they do it; for better or for worse. They actually can have a difficult time, adjusting to the way we do things in the US.
We had a liaison that wanted to help things be more "agile," so our infrastructure/process guy suggested daily morning standups (you know, informal, 15-minute meetings in the morning).
He turned that into once-a-week 1-hour sit-down meetings before lunch on Fridays, with a rigorous format.