Is there a word to describe the act of discussing a problem and avoiding solving it?

I would like to pin it to my company's noticeboard.

I'll give an example scenario... at work today a colleague encountered a problem, and solved it quickly, but needed their manager to speak with a different team's manager to help avoid the problem in the future. However, rather than my colleague's manager quickly speaking with the appropriate team manager, he had a 30+ minute discussion with a different manager about the problem, which yielded no useful results.

I'd love a word or phrase, something to "brand" this type of scenario, so that I can politely and humorously warn people about the dangers of wasting time by unnecessarily chewing over simple problems that could be solved easily.

I thought about words like 'fusspot' (worrier, stickler, an anal person) but it's more the act that I want to describe. So I thought about 'time-wasting' but that's far too general. Thanks for any suggestions!

Solution 1:

Procrastinating:

to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done

Or bike-shedding:

Parkinson provides the example of a fictional committee whose job was to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spending the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bike shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important and a far more difficult and complex task.

Solution 2:

If the person failed to act because the discussion was just taking up time, to shilly-shally or dither might be useful.

In other words, the person was wasting time by being indecisive.

Cambridge Dictionary (for both terms):

Stop dithering and choose which one you want!

shilly-shally - to spend too much time doing something or making a decision because you do not know what is the right thing to do"

Stop shilly-shallying and make a decision now!

Colloquially, we say: Stop screwing around.

Solution 3:

beat (about/around) the bush TFD

To speak vaguely or euphemistically so as to avoid talking directly about an unpleasant or sensitive topic.