Charge For Meetings?

January 31st, 2006
[ Office Gossip ]

Meetings cost time and are both physically and mentally draining to people involved. They can also be valuable tools for people in getting to know each other and solving important problems cooperatively.

Every company I’ve ever worked for has too many meetings. Somewhere along the way we forgot that no one’s actually working when we’re meeting. Meeting is not working.

Love them or hate them it’s tough to argue that meetings are free. They cost money, at the very least they cost salaries. Maybe the people holding meetings need to be accountable for those costs?

Maybe companies should charge people for holding meetings? I know some companies charge the appropriate project budget for the incurred salaries of the people sitting in those meetings, however, that’s just a client billing. If you want to drag the CEO, the CTO, and 5 developers into a 3 hour meeting then that’s fine. You will, however, have to play that return on investment(ROI) game that MBA types love to talk about.

A related Fast Company article, Change Is Sweet

“We have way too many meetings,” says Weller, 56, who has been CEO since 1994. “Meetings waste time and sap people’s energy. They slow us down. So far, I’ve been polite about breaking them up. But this year, I won’t tolerate them.”