The Challenge

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Meetings Eating Up Execution Time

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When MustardSeed embedded a project manager into a fast-growing organization, the first issue surfaced almost immediately: meetings were consuming nearly the entire workday.

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Recurring syncs, operating reviews, and alignment calls left employees with little time for actual execution. Staff were drained, projects were slipping, and leadership had no clear picture of how much time (and money) meetings were costing them.

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The client’s experience was typical of many growing companies:

• Dozens of recurring meetings without agendas.
• Large numbers of “optional” attendees pulled in just to stay informed.
• No centralized view of the total time and cost burden.

It wasn’t until MustardSeed began logging every recurring meeting and calculating cost in FTE hours and dollars that the true impact became clear.

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The Findings

The Q2 baseline revealed:

• $654,196 in annualized meetings costs.

• 5.5 full-time equivalents (FTEs) worth of work tied up in meetings.

• 375 recurring meeting attendees across 34 unique meetings.

• Just five meetings accounted for 42% of the total cost.

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The Solution

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Standardized Pricing Structure

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Using a Smartsheet-based tracking model, MustardSeed's project manager worked with client teams to:

• Categorize every recurring meeting by frequency, purpose, and attendee type (required vs optional).
• Calculate cost per meeting based on average hourly rate.
• Flag the most expensive meetings for redesign.
• Help functional leaders decide who truly needed to attend and where agendas were required.
• Encourage “inform vs. attend” models (meeting notes distributed instead of pulling everyone into the call).

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The Results

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By Q3, the difference was striking. Among roughly 100 employees (66 of whom were part of the initiative):

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• Total annual meeting cost dropped by $101,490.
• FTE time freed up: 0.86 heads, or 1,789 hours annually.
• Average meeting cost fell 36%, from $745 to $479.
• Attendee count dropped by 49 people, even as the number of unique meetings increased from 34 to 42.
• The top 5 most expensive meetings shrank by $46,000 collectively.

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