Executive summary
The cost of meetings is the largest line in an organization's time budget, and nobody approves it. One bad meeting is annoying. Thousands of them drain the capacity a strategy depends on. Leaders who put a price on meetings, make every meeting produce a decision and protect focus time can win back weeks of capacity without hiring anyone.
- Ineffective collaboration costs Fortune 500 companies about 25 billion work hours a year.1
- The most-pinged 20% of Microsoft 365 users are interrupted by a meeting, email or chat every two minutes of the workday.2
- Only 41% of CEOs say their calendar protects time for deep work.3
Leaders who win back capacity make three moves:
- Price: they calculate what meetings cost and review recurring ones.
- Purpose: every meeting exists to produce a decision or action, and status moves to writing.
- Protect: they make information easy to find and guard focus time, starting with their own.
Do you know what this meeting is costing you?
I ask leadership teams this question a lot. I'll be sitting with 20 leaders around a table discussing an acquisition, and I'm calculating the cost of the hour while they talk. They usually aren't.
It comes from my consulting years, when my time was billed in 15-minute increments. Once you've worked that way, you see meetings as spending. Every hour in a meeting is an hour that isn't spent on the work itself.
One meeting on its own is a small cost. But some meetings have 10, 15 or 20 people. They happen every week or every month. And they repeat across every initiative in the organization, each one burning a little more capacity. At some point people ask: when are we supposed to do the work?
The cost of a meeting is simple to calculate
Cost of a meeting = number of people × length in hours × average loaded hourly cost × number of times a year it happens.
Loaded hourly cost means salary plus benefits and overhead, divided by working hours. Your finance team can give you an average by level.
Here is an illustration with round numbers. A weekly one-hour status meeting with 12 people, at an average loaded cost of $120 an hour, held 48 weeks a year, costs 12 × 1 × $120 × 48 = $69,120 a year. That is one meeting. Add the time to prepare, the time to get back into focused work afterwards and the follow-up meetings it spawns, and the true figure is higher.
Run the same math across your leadership team's recurring meetings. Most leaders are surprised by the total, and more surprised by how few of those meetings end in a decision.
Where the cost of meetings comes from: six causes
Two causes are about price, two about purpose and two about protection.
01. Nobody knows what meetings cost. Meetings are free to book and never appear in a budget, so nobody weighs the cost against the value.
02. Recurring meetings never end. A series booked for a project keeps running long after the project changed.
03. Meetings replace decisions. When nobody owns a decision, a meeting gets booked to discuss it, then another. McKinsey estimates slow, ineffective decisions waste about 530,000 days of manager time a year at a typical Fortune 500 company.4
04. Status is shared live, with everyone invited. Teams gather to report progress that could be read in two minutes, and people attend in case something affects them.
05. Information is hard to find. Atlassian found leaders and teams waste 25% of their time searching for answers.5 When people can't find information, they book a meeting to ask.
06. Leaders' calendars set the pattern. When senior leaders run back-to-back meetings with no focus time, their teams do the same.
Three moves win back the hours
Price. Calculate the annual cost of every recurring meeting and share it. Review the list and cancel or merge anything without a clear purpose or a decision in the last month. This fixes causes 01 and 02.
Purpose. Every meeting has an owner, an agenda and a decision or outcome it exists to produce. Status updates move to writing ahead of time, and attendance is limited to the people needed to make or carry out the decision. Others get the notes. This fixes 03 and 04.
Protect. Put answers where people can find them, so a question doesn't need a meeting. Agree on blocks of time without meetings, and have leaders keep them first. Asana found people say better processes would save them 4.9 hours a week,6 more than six working weeks a year per person, waiting to be reinvested. This fixes 05 and 06.
The meeting cost test
Six questions, one for each cause.
- Do you know the annual cost of your leadership team's recurring meetings?
- When was the last time someone cancelled a recurring series?
- What share of last week's meetings ended with a decision or a clear action?
- How many of your recurring meetings exist mainly to share status?
- How long does it take someone to find the information they need without asking in a meeting?
- Do senior leaders' calendars include protected focus time, and do they keep it?
What leaders who protect capacity do in practice
1. They put the price on the invite. The estimated cost of a recurring meeting is calculated and shared when it is created.
2. They review recurring meetings every quarter. Series that have outlived their purpose are cancelled.
3. They make every meeting name its decision. The invite states the decision or outcome the meeting exists to produce, and the meeting ends with it.
4. They move status to writing. Updates are shared ahead of time, and meeting time is saved for discussion and decisions.
5. They keep one place for answers. Decisions, plans and status live where everyone can find them.
6. They block focus time, starting at the top. Leaders hold meeting-free blocks and keep them, so their teams can too.
Bring Create More Time to your event
Create More Time is my keynote on capacity, focus and flow at work. I show leaders and teams the math of their time, where their capacity goes and how to win it back, with practical steps they can apply to their own calendars the same week.
I deliver it as a 45- to 90-minute keynote, in person or virtual, tailored to your organization and audience, with a custom tip sheet your attendees can use after the event. It works for leadership offsites, kickoffs, all-staff meetings and conferences.
Conclusion: time is the budget
Every strategy is paid for in people's time. Leaders who price meetings, give each one a purpose and protect focus can return weeks of capacity to their teams, without hiring anyone.
The hours are already there. The work is in deciding to spend them differently.
Read next: Fewer Priorities, Better Results
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the cost of meetings?
The cost of meetings is the people time an organization spends in meetings, priced in money. It counts salary, benefits and overhead for everyone in the room, plus the time to prepare, get back into focused work and follow up.
How do you calculate the cost of a meeting?
Multiply the number of people by the meeting length in hours, the average loaded hourly cost (salary plus benefits and overhead) and the number of times a year it happens. A weekly one-hour meeting with 12 people at $120 an hour, held 48 weeks a year, costs $69,120.
What is meeting overload?
Meeting overload is when meetings take so much of people's time that focused work gets pushed into evenings or doesn't happen. Microsoft found the most-pinged 20% of Microsoft 365 users are interrupted by a meeting, email or chat every two minutes of the workday.
How can leaders reduce meetings?
Calculate and share the cost of recurring meetings, cancel the ones without a purpose, give every meeting an owner and a decision to produce, move status updates to writing, limit attendees and protect blocks of focus time.
Why do organizations have so many meetings?
Often because meetings are free to book, recurring series never end, decisions have no clear owner, status is shared live, information is hard to find and leaders' own calendars set the pattern.
How much time could better processes save?
Asana found knowledge workers say better processes would save them 4.9 hours a week, more than six working weeks a year per person.
Who is Create More Time for?
Leadership teams, managers and staff who feel their calendars are full and their real work is squeezed. It suits offsites, kickoffs, all-staff meetings and conferences, and each talk is tailored.
About Suzanne Knight
Suzanne Knight, MBA, MA, is a keynote speaker and the CEO of mBolden, a Toronto-based management consulting firm (mbolden.co). She has led transformation in the Ontario government, at Deloitte for nearly eight years, as Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Philip Morris International in Canada, and as VP, Transformation Services at Walmart Canada.
She has advised more than 80 organizations in 14 countries, including Fortune 500 companies and governments, and has spoken on more than 65 stages in 18 months. Her TEDx talk is The myth of doing it all. Her keynotes are The Next Big Thing, Never Waste a Good Crisis, The Trust Advantage and Create More Time.
Sources and references
- Atlassian. (2024). State of Teams 2024. Source ↗
- Microsoft. (2025). Work Trend Index: Breaking down the infinite workday (based on the top 20% of users by ping volume). Source ↗
- Bain & Company. (2026, June 1). The 2026 CEO Agenda: Where Ambition Outpaces Execution (survey of 100 CEOs). Source ↗
- McKinsey & Company. (2019). Three keys to faster, better decisions (1,200+ managers). Source ↗
- Atlassian. (2025). State of Teams 2025. Source ↗
- Asana. (2023, March 8). Anatomy of Work Global Index 2023 (9,615 knowledge workers in six countries). Source ↗