Run the agenda, watch the cost

Write the agenda before the meeting, run it during, and read the wrap-up after. The three steps are separate on purpose, because the useful decisions happen at different times.

Build the agenda

Add each item with a title and a number of minutes. Titles work best as the decision you want, not the topic you want to discuss, so "decide the launch date" beats "launch date". Reorder with the arrows and put the item you cannot skip first, because the last item is the one that gets squeezed. The planned time and planned cost update as you type, which is the moment to cut something rather than during the meeting.

Set the cost basis

Attendees is everyone who joins, including anyone who only listens. The rate is an average fully loaded hourly cost per person: salary plus payroll taxes, benefits and overhead, which typically runs 1.25 to 1.4 times base salary. A blended average across the room is close enough, since the point is the order of magnitude.

Run it

Start meeting begins the first item. The big number counts down for the current item and keeps going into negative once the timebox runs out, turning amber and showing what the overrun has cost. Next item logs how long the item really took and moves on. Previous steps back if you jumped early. Pause holds both the countdown and the money. The countdown is anchored to the system clock, so it stays accurate while the tab sits behind a slide deck.

Close it out

After the last item you get a table of planned against actual minutes for every item, what each one cost, the total, and the biggest overrun. Copy summary puts the whole thing on the clipboard as plain text you can paste into the meeting notes. The agenda itself is saved in this browser, so a weekly meeting can reuse the same list and compare actuals week to week.

Six people at $90 an hour is $540 an hour for the room, or $9 a minute. The agenda is four items: a 5 minute check-in, 15 minutes on the pricing decision, 20 minutes on the migration plan, and 5 minutes for actions. That is 45 minutes planned and $405 of salary time.

1. Check-in runs 9 minutes instead of 5. The overrun alone cost $36.
2. Pricing takes its 15 and the decision gets made. $135, and worth it.
3. The migration plan runs 28 minutes because two people had not read the document. $252 against a $180 timebox.
4. Actions gets 3 minutes because everyone has another call, so the follow-ups are vague.

The meeting cost $495 against $405 planned. The wrap-up shows exactly where the extra $90 went, and the answer is not "the meeting ran long", it is "check-in and an unread document". That is a fixable thing, which is the whole reason for logging actuals.

An agenda keeps a meeting honest only when each item has an owner and a timebox. The timebox on its own turns into a countdown nobody enforces, and the owner on their own turns into a topic that expands to fill the hour. Together they give anyone in the room a reason to say the item is done.

Send the agenda before the meeting rather than reading it out at the start. People who know what is being decided arrive with a position, and the discussion starts from somewhere instead of from scratch. Anything that turns out to need more time than its box becomes a separate conversation with the two or three people who actually need to be in it.

The running cost is a prompt, not a verdict. It is useful when it makes the group decide between finishing this item and starting the next one. It is corrosive when it becomes a way to hurry someone who is raising a real problem. If the number is making people reluctant to speak, hide it and keep the timeboxes.