22 People. 2 Hours. I Did the Maths.

I was mid-conversation with a client last week. Productive conversation! Digging into some analysis, talking through decisions on marketing spend. The kind of conversation that actually moves things forward.

And then he said: "Really appreciate this. I won't be able to respond for the next two hours - I've got a meeting."

I laughed and said - bet there's at least 22 people in it too.

He came back. Confirmed it. 22 PEOPLE!!! This is why I don't miss being in house.

Let's actually work this out

Average salary in Gibraltar at that level. Let's call it £67,500 a year.

Break that down. £32 an hour per person.

Twenty-two people. Two hours. That's £1,408. Just to be in the room.

Run that every week for a year and you've spent £73,216 on one meeting.

One meeting that has the same agenda it had last week. And the week before. And probably has a section called "AOB" that nobody has ever successfully defined.

But here's the number that actually matters. It's not the £1,408... It's what those 22 people could have done instead.

I guarantee that at least half of them could have individually moved something forward that was worth ten times their hourly rate to the business. A campaign decision. A client problem solved. A brief finally written. Something that generates actual revenue rather than quietly consumes it.

So yes. The meeting cost £1,408 in salaries. The opportunity cost? You do the maths.

What's actually happening in that room

Or that Teams call. Because it's almost always a Teams call now, which somehow makes everything worse.

Twenty-two people staring at the same screen. And at any given moment - I will bet confidently and without hesitation - maybe four or five of them are genuinely present. The rest are on a second screen. A third screen. Clearing their inbox. Reorganising their desktop. Technically in the meeting. Spiritually somewhere else entirely.

And honestly? Can you blame them? When the agenda is a template copy-pasted from last week. When the first forty minutes is a report that could have been a pre-read. When the whole thing stopped being about strategy eighteen months ago and quietly became a BAU ritual that everyone attends because not attending feels worse than attending.

It becomes white noise. Expensive, time-consuming, calendar-blocking white noise.

Then there's the other problem

The overly confident ones.

You know exactly who I'm talking about. The person who talks before they think. Who fills every silence with volume. Who has somehow convinced an entire organisation that confidence and contribution are the same thing.

In a focused meeting with the right four people, they're manageable. In a two-hour call with twenty-two, they're dangerous. Because everyone else has already drifted to their second screen, and the loudest voice becomes the only voice, and suddenly that's the direction the business goes in.

I have a very telling face. Always have. It is genuinely one of my biggest professional liabilities - people have always been able to read exactly what I'm thinking before I've decided whether to say it, where the camera is pointed directly at your face for two hours... dangerous hahaha

I'm not anti-meeting

I understand some conversations need a room and some decisions need the right people present. But there's a version of meetings that actually works and it looks nothing like the one I just described.

It looks like this. Something needs solving. Book thirty minutes with the three people who can actually solve it. Circulate a pre-read. Make the decision in the room. Send a wrap-up with clear actions after. Everyone else gets the notes.

Reactive. Focused. Accountable. No passengers. No performance. No standing appointment that exists because it existed last week.

The meeting should serve the decision. Not the other way around.

Steve built something

While I was processing all of this, Steve built a meeting excuse generator. Five minutes. AI. Completely ridiculous.

It made us laugh for ten minutes straight and it's probably more useful than the meeting you've got at three o'clock.

Link here: Use it wisely.

The number nobody puts in the board pack

£73,216. Per year. For one meeting.

Before you factor in what those people didn't do while they were in it.

The meeting you didn't need is already on the clock. And somewhere right now, 22 people are in a Teams call - cameras on, second screens open - proving it.

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