Your Meetings Have a Price Tag. Do You Know What It Is?
Updated: Sep 11
Early in a recent engagement, I was shown a meeting inventory — a list of recurring meetings, who attends each one, and how often they run.
Out of curiosity, I did some quick math.
Headcount per meeting. Duration. Frequency. A conservative hourly rate of $100 per person.
One weekly meeting — ten people, one hour, fifty-two weeks — came to roughly $52,000 𝗮 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿. At $100 an hour per person — and that's a floor, not an average; in most organizations, the fully-loaded cost of the people in that room is significantly higher.
And that's before accounting for everything surrounding the meeting itself. For every executive-facing meeting, there are typically at least one or two preparatory conversations beforehand — a pre-call to align on messaging, a working session to finalize the deck. Then the debrief. Then the follow-up email. And often, a follow-up meeting to re-litigate what was decided. Some of that surrounding work is simply the cost of a high-stakes meeting done right. But when the prep consistently outweighs the meeting itself, that's usually a signal worth paying attention to.
The meeting is never just the meeting.
When you look at a full meeting landscape this way, two questions become hard to ignore:
1. 𝗗𝗼 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲? Attendance lists tend to grow over time and rarely shrink. But before anyone gets added to a recurring invite, it's worth asking a more deliberate question: what does this specific person need to do in the room?
Most attendees fall into one of three groups. Some are there to 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲 — they have authority over the outcome and need to be present to exercise it. Some are there to 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲 — their input is needed to reach the right decision. And some are there only to 𝗯𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱 — they need to know what was decided, but don't need to be in the room when it happens.
That third group is almost always larger than it should be. And it's the easiest to fix: a well-written recap, sent promptly after the meeting, gives informed stakeholders exactly what they need without pulling them out of their day. Every person who moves from attendee to recipient is an hour returned to the organization — and a smaller, sharper meeting left behind.
2. 𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗲? A meeting without a defined outcome is an open invitation for the loudest voice in the room to set the direction. Before anyone hits send on a calendar invite, the outcome should already be named. If it can't be, the meeting isn't ready.
Three questions I've learned to ask before any recurring meeting goes on the calendar:
𝗪𝗛𝗢 actually needs to be there — and in what capacity? Decider, contributor, or just informed?
𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 is the specific outcome this meeting needs to produce?
𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗡 does this recurring meeting end — what's the trigger that would tell you it no longer needs to exist?
Most recurring meetings were created with good intentions. Not all of them were created with clear ones.
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