Ten Questions to Ask About Meetings

When did you last ask yourself, “how much does this meeting cost?”

Multiply the number of people at the table times their hourly rate, taking into consideration that their cost to the organisation is around 1.5 times their salary, or even more if they are being charged out .
For instance:

There are ten people at a meeting whose annual salary is $70,000.

Hourly rate = $70,000 /1976 (number of hours in a 38 hour week)

= $35.43

Times cost to
company (1.5) = $53.14

Times 10 =$530.14
attendees

Plus another 50% =$797.06
for time wasted
before and after

Ten questions to ask about meetings:

• Did you get value from your meeting?
• When did you last question what value was added?
• As a manager or participant, when did you last question the meetings’ outcomes?
• What time could be saved from unnecessary and unproductive meetings?
• Do you know what meetings are held regularly and their duration?
• Did the right people get invited?
• Did we tap into our collective experience and intelligence?
• Do our people know how to run effective meetings?
• Have we ever trained anyone to run meetings?
• How much did this meeting cost?

Often in busy growing organisations we promote good people into roles that require meeting skills and assume that they know what to do. Having attended many meetings, as a participant doesn’t mean that you appreciate how skilful a good chair person is or a good minute taker etc.

For many years I was the world’s best passenger in a car and demonstrated very clearly and quickly how little I had learned when I had my very first driving lesson!

The effectiveness of meetings and their managers can improve instantly through some very simple skills training and some smart questioning processes that eliminate the need for some meetings altogether.

We run a fun workshop with many real examples of our own forays into the world of meetings, funny and serious. The basic skills can be acquired quickly and also passed on to other colleagues by those who are willing to reinforce their own learning through teaching.

Catherine