When a high-growth company embedded a MustardSeed project manager, the hidden cost of meetings finally came into view. By logging every recurring meeting and calculating true time and dollar impact, they uncovered more than $654K in annual meeting costs (and a pattern of wasted execution time).

Within a single quarter, MustardSeed’s data-driven approach cut annual meeting spend by $100K, freed nearly one full-time equivalent of productive capacity, and reduced average cost per meeting by 36%, all while improving morale and speeding execution.

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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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Beyond the Dollars: Morale and Momentum

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The cost savings told one story, but employees told another:

• They finally had time back in their day to focus on project delivery.
• Meetings stopped feeling like a drain, improving morale and engagement.
• Work started moving forward instead of stalling in repetitive discussions.
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Strategic Takeaway

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For scaling organizations, meetings are often the hidden tax on growth. Left unchecked, they erode morale, stall execution, and quietly consume hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost productivity.

By bringing visibility, discipline, and structure, MustardSeed helped this client reduce meeting waste by six figures in just one quarter, without slowing alignment or execution.

Client Confidentiality: We respect the privacy of the organizations that trust us to embed directly into their teams. For that reason, we do not publicly disclose client names in our case studies. If you would like to verify our impact and speak directly with references, we are happy to facilitate those introductions. Contact our team.

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We respect the privacy of the organizations that trust us to embed directly into their teams. For that reason, we do not publicly disclose client names in our case studies. If you would like to verify our impact and speak directly with references, we are happy to facilitate those introductions. Contact our team here.