Have you ever attended the meeting from hell? Yes, you know the one – the objectives are undefined, the meeting crawls on for hours, personalities clash, disagreements take over, and progress grinds to a halt. In short, nothing gets accomplished. If you’ve been to even one bad meeting, then in my opinion, that’s one meeting too many!
Have you ever stopped to consider exactly how much these non-productive meetings are costing you and your organization? Let’s just say you have a regular weekly meeting with five attendees that runs for two hours. At an average salary of $50,000 per year, that translates roughly to $25 per hour. If you add in benefits, that takes you to about $35 an hour. Five people at two hours times 50 weeks a year equals $17,500. And this total doesn’t include any additional costs such as travel, equipment charges, and catering expenses, nor the costs of replacement coverage while people at the meeting. Unquestionably, there is a bottom-line financial cost of ineffective meetings.
What’s happening in your organization? Are “meetings from hell” widespread and frequent? Or have you figured out how to avoid the meetings “trap”? Do tell.