Earlier quoted context omitted.
A person that dedicates time to learning how to be efficient at their job can in some roles achieve more in less time.
I find it hard to believe. Learning also takes time and in software development you need to learn constantly. You can optimize some type of work, maybe you can code faster, but others are fast too! Remember, everyone around you passed the LeetCode test. How would you optimize meetings, communication with the team, reading/reviewing other peoples code?
1. Having purposeful, moderated meetings with minutes and deliverables that can be evaluated. When you force people to deliver something, and when that something will be subject to open evaluation, meetings stop being "free" and people that see "meetings as a job" will quickly give their 2 weeks notice and go away to the next company that will sponsor their lazy lifestyle.
Managers are employees too, and their performance is more important than the performance of the people they manage.
2. Communication with the team is solved by verifying communication. At the end of a meeting, ask a random person in the room if they understood the presentation. At the end of a standup meeting, ask a random team member what someone else was doing. You will be surprised with the results. And people will grow around this process by becoming better communicators, and by owning their responsibility as attendees.
3. For code reviews, you should start by automating as much as you can with static analysis, creating a coding standard and documenting good practices, then adding a human at the end to verify that humans are not cheating by suppresing rules. Also, make sure that the feedback is about the code, is fair and never gets personal.
The main takeaway is: verify everything. Take nothing for granted.