The Most Expensive Part of Your Business Might Be Your Meetings

TL;DR

• Meetings are not expensive because of the calendar block. They are expensive because of the people in the room.

• Most meeting waste happens before the meeting starts. Poor preparation leads to real-time updates, vague conversation, and decisions that never land.

• If the cost of the meeting exceeds the prep you are willing to do for it, cancel the meeting.

• Clarity happens before the meeting. Execution happens after.

• The meeting itself is the least important part.

The Meeting Problem Leaders Pretend Not to See

Harvard Business Review has a meeting cost calculator. If leaders used it before booking recurring meetings, half of corporate calendars would disappear overnight.

A sixty-minute meeting with eight leaders is not a sixty-minute meeting.
It is eight hours of leadership time.
Multiply that by compensation and overhead, and you start to see the real operational cost.

Organizations treat meetings like air. Always available. Always necessary. Free to inhale.

But meetings are not free. They are one of the most expensive line items in your operating culture.

The irony is that most meetings do not fail because the meeting was a bad idea.
They fail because no one prepared.

People walk in waiting for clarity instead of bringing it.

Meetings Are Not Where the Thinking Happens

Leaders often expect meetings to create alignment, clarity, or insight.
But the thinking that makes meetings valuable does not happen in the room.
It happens before.

What creates a productive meeting is:

• a clear brief

• an agenda with context

• required updates sent in advance

• decisions framed ahead of time

• expectations shared early

This is the Communicate stage of the LoyaltyOps™ Flywheel™.
It is the responsibility of the organizer to create the conditions for meaningful contribution.

When people show up prepared, discussion becomes sharper.
When people show up empty-handed, the meeting becomes a real-time update session.

And real-time updates are extremely expensive.

The Cost of Lack of Preparation

Lack of preparation creates three predictable problems.

1. Meetings Become Status Updates, Not Strategic Conversations

If updates arrive in the meeting instead of before it, no one can think ahead.
Participants spend the meeting gathering information instead of interpreting it.

This leads to:

• shallow discussion

• weak decisions

• follow-up meetings

• rework

• confusion

You lose clarity.
You lose speed.
You lose trust.

2. Meetings Multiply Because Decisions Lag

One unprepared meeting creates three more:

• the alignment meeting

• the decision meeting

• the follow-up meeting

Leaders confuse time spent together with progress.
They are not the same.

3. Meetings Become Cultural Signals of Low Standards

When a company tolerates poorly run meetings, it teaches people that:

• preparation is optional

• thinking can happen later

• leadership time is not valuable

• calendars exist to be filled, not protected

This is cultural erosion.
It reflects a lack of Cultural Standards™, not a scheduling issue.

Why Leaders Must Understand the Cost of a Meeting

Most leaders underestimate the cost of a meeting because they only see the meeting on the calendar.
They do not see the hidden cost behind it.

It's time to ask:

• Does this meeting produce ROI each month?

• Does it reduce friction?

• Does it accelerate decisions?

• Does it eliminate rework?

• Does it clarify execution?

If the answer is no, the meeting is not a meeting. It is a tax.

Structure Does Not Guarantee Value

Many teams assume that if a meeting is structured like an L10, a WBR, or an OKR review, it must be valuable.

Structure is not value.
Preparation is value.

When teams enter a meeting with:

• no pre-work

• no context

• no decisions framed

• no alignment on what success looks like

The meeting becomes an extremely expensive thinking session that could have happened asynchronously.

Meetings are not for status.
Meetings are for synthesis.

And synthesis requires advance work.

The Rule That Will Improve Every Meeting You Run

If the meeting costs more than the preparation you are willing to do for it, cancel the meeting.

This rule forces a leadership discipline that most organizations lack:

• value creation

• clarity

• ownership

• accountability

• respect for time

It shifts meetings from habitual to intentional.

This is the Process layer inside the People–Process–Performance Model™.
You cannot have performance without the process standards that protect clarity and time.

How to Improve Meeting Quality Immediately

Here is the simplest operating system for effective meetings.
No new software. No reorg. No dramatic overhaul.

1. Write a Clear Brief

Three sentences maximum:

• What is the purpose

• What context or constraints matter

• What decision or outcome is required

• When does this need to be resolved or decided

2. Send Materials 24 Hours Before

Not five minutes before.
Not in the meeting.
Not as people are joining the call.

3. Start With the Decision, Not the Update

Begin every meeting with:

Here is the decision we need to make.
Here is what we already know.
Here is what is still unclear.

This moves the team from information gathering to sense-making.

4. End With Clarity, Not Possibility

Who owns what
By when
Why it matters
And what happens next

This is the Commit stage of the Flywheel.
Without it, everything slides.

Meetings Are Leadership Behaviour in Public

The quality of your meetings is the quality of your leadership.
Meetings reveal:

• your standards

• your clarity

• your preparation

• your priorities

• your discipline

• your respect for people’s time

• your ability to think ahead

Meetings are a direct reflection of your culture.

When leaders protect time, teams follow.
When leaders prepare, teams prepare.
When leaders value clarity, teams operate with clarity.

If you want to understand how meetings are affecting performance, clarity, and execution inside your organization, you can book a discovery call. We will map where time is being wasted, where standards are missing, and how to redesign meetings so they become high-impact tools instead of cultural liabilities.