In a previous career, I headed a large state agency. Before I arrived, the organization had a culture of attending regularly scheduled meetings—regardless of whether the meetings were necessary. In other words, the meetings were held without regard for the true cost of the meeting. While I had some success in curtailing the number and length of these meetings, I wasn’t entirely successful. (Bureaucratic inertia is a difficult beast to slay.) Sometimes during the meetings I would do a rough calculation in my mind on the cost of the meeting by estimating every attendees hourly wage and then multiplying the figures by the length of the meeting. After I added it all up, more often than not, the cost of the meeting didn’t justify the benefit.
I suspect I am not alone in my experience. Well, according to this posting on TechCrunch a new company called PayScale is taking the guess work out such back-of-the-envelop calculations. The tool is a perfect example of what I call in my forthcoming book, “walking the escalator”—or using existing technologies to make your business or organization more effective today.
The old saying is true: “Time is money” … so you might as well put a real cost to all those meetings you are attending. My guess is that once you do both the number and length of the meetings your organization is holding will drop precipitiously.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, robotics, RFID, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
