>In my view, in a healthy organization, the meeting itself should be a point of collaboration. Otherwise it's a waste of time.
Everyone publicly and mutually agreeing to support a decision IS valuable collaboration even if they all had 1-on-1 discussions on that idea before hand. Meetings are pretty horrible venues to actually discuss an idea in depth for many reasons. However if you don't all publicly agree on the same idea then the chance for backstabbing politics increases significantly. In essence it's a trust but verify approach.
Everyone publicly and mutually agreeing to support a decision IS valuable collaboration even if they all had 1-on-1 discussions on that idea before hand. Meetings are pretty horrible venues to actually discuss an idea in depth for many reasons. However if you don't all publicly agree on the same idea then the chance for backstabbing politics increases significantly. In essence it's a trust but verify approach.