| These kinds of snarky calculators actually make meetings worse, I think. There’s lots of people who I think enjoy meetings because it demonstrates power. Calculating how much their meeting costs will make this worse because it’s easier to see how powerful a meeting is. Separately, I don’t think that time consumed as a cost is unknown to participants so quantifying it doesn’t help much. Kind of like how calories on the Burger King menu doesn’t result in fewer double whoppers with cheese ordered. To help prevent pointless meetings, what I do is reject meetings that don’t have agendas or clear objectives. I explicitly decline and say “I don’t know what this is for” and sometimes I find out what the reason is. Sometimes it changes my mind, but usually blank invites mean not so great meetings. And then, I try to never schedule meetings unless there’s no other solution. And I send simple agendas, and if necessary, homework with a time estimate needed to process (eg, read this background before we meet). Sometimes if I’m feeling froggy, I’ll actually mention something about how it’s a 30 minute meeting with the context and background done beforehand or a 60 minute meeting if we want to walk through everything together. I’m not sure how objectively valuable this is to the org, but it makes me feel better. And I’ve had multiple people comment that they appreciate it and use my reputation and approach in deciding whether to attend in my meetings. |
Ten people losing twenty minutes sitting there waiting.