Lots of people complain about meetings. I don’t. We are social creatures building something together. Meetings are how we get work done.

What I dislike are meetings that grow without enough thought. Everyone’s read or heard the trope about how much meetings cost per hour. There’s another cost that isn’t talked about as much.

Every added attendee of a meeting is a tax on the existing attendees. In a productive meeting, only one person can talk at once. The more people you have present, the more topics people will want to discuss, and the more aspects of each topic they’ll want to discuss. If the meeting stays the same length, that means everyone gets a smaller share. That means it’s less likely to reach resolution, and either the issue will be unresolved or you’ll need another meeting. Alternatively, the meeting is lengthened. Either way, it’s a cost that others will have to bear.

This tax is proportional to the size of the meeting. Adding another person to a four person meeting taxes four people. Adding another person to a ten person meeting taxes ten. When you add that person, your meeting starts off in the hole. To make it worth it, that person has to add value, and it’s not just some value but more value than they take away. Otherwise you made everything worse for everybody.