Your $50, 000 meeting budget - or the cost of meetings.

Few people think about the cost of meetings, if they did, they would probably spend a bit more time considering their purpose.

Here's a real example I have sourced and owing to the live nature of this project, I have removed all identifying features.

A well-known hospitality company has to complete the design, construction and installation of a corporate events suite at a major international sports event being held in May this year. The total cost of this project is around $400, 000.

In the last 10 days the principal designer has attended 12 meetings with an attendee list of some 27 people - many of whom are Directors and VPs. As a director, and stakeholder, she can consult but is not empowered to make decisions. Those are made at VP level.

Let's make a conservative assumption that the average cost to the company of those attendees is $75 per hour. That means a single hour meeting comes at a cost of

27 x 75 x 1 = $2025 for one meeting (not including prep time and documentation of decisions).

Here's the challenge, most of these meetings have no clear outcomes nor decisions made and so, they last for 2 plus hours.

That brings us to $4050 for one meeting based on these assumptions.

Multiply by 12 we get $48, 600. This is 12% of the originally quoted budget.

At this point I would like to remind you that construction and installation has to be concluded in the next 4 - 5 weeks, including time for security sweeps as the event is a major international endeavor.

Here are some other challenges. The procurement cycle for this project is a 5-step process with decisions made only at VP level. The procurement software - flagged in the planning stages - has been broken for 12 months and the director cannot initiate procurement as she's not got the delegated authority for that. As principal designer, she's also not allowed to sign off shades of color for the paints that need purchasing.

I bet you thought the title of this article was excessive.

Next time you need a meeting, ask yourself why and consider the outcomes before ringing the bell. Meetings are projects too and come at a cost to the efficiency of delivery.