Every organization accumulates recurring meetings like barnacles on a ship. They start with good intentions, become habits, and eventually persist long after their original purpose has expired. The average team has 3-5 recurring meetings that no longer justify their cost. Here's how to identify them and build the case for cancellation.
Step 1: Audit Your Recurring Meetings
List every recurring meeting your team holds. For each one, calculate the cost using our meeting cost calculator — people × fully loaded hourly rate × duration × frequency. Then multiply by 48 working weeks to get the annual cost. Most teams are shocked when they see the total. A team of 8 with five recurring weekly meetings averaging 45 minutes each at $50/hour is spending roughly $144,000 per year on those five meetings alone.
Step 2: Score Each Meeting
For each recurring meeting, ask the team to score it on three criteria. First, does this meeting produce a clear output? A decision, an action item list, a resolved blocker — something tangible. Meetings that consistently end without a concrete outcome are candidates for cancellation. Second, does everyone in the room need to be there? If half the attendees are passive listeners, either reduce the invite list or replace the meeting with a written summary. Third, would anything break if we skipped it for two weeks? This is the most revealing test. If the answer is "probably not," the meeting isn't critical.
Step 3: Build the Business Case
Presenting "I think we have too many meetings" gets nods and no action. Presenting "we're spending $144,000 per year on five recurring meetings, and here's evidence that two of them aren't producing value" gets results. The key elements of a persuasive case:
Lead with the total annual cost of the meetings you're proposing to cut. Frame it in relatable terms — "this is equivalent to one junior hire" or "this would fund our Q3 tooling budget." Then show the scoring results for each meeting. If the team rated a meeting low on output and necessity, that data speaks for itself. Finally, propose a trial period — cancel for 4 weeks, see what happens. This lowers the perceived risk because it's reversible.
Step 4: Replace, Don't Just Remove
Canceling a meeting without replacing its function creates anxiety. For each meeting you cancel, specify what replaces it. A weekly status meeting becomes a Monday async check-in in Slack. A biweekly review becomes a shared document with comments. A daily standup becomes a bot-powered written update. The replacement should be lower-cost and async where possible.
Which Meetings to Target First
Status update meetings are almost always the best first target. They're high frequency, involve many people, and can be fully replaced with async tools. A 30-minute weekly status meeting with 8 people costs about $19,200/year — replacing it with a Slack thread costs essentially nothing.
FYI meetings where one person presents information to a group are the second target. These can be replaced with a recorded video or a written memo that people consume on their own time. The information transfer is actually better async because people can pause, re-read, and process at their own pace.
Large recurring meetings with 10+ attendees where most people don't speak are the third target. These are almost always carrying passengers who attend out of habit or FOMO rather than necessity.
After You Cancel
Track the results. Did anything break? Did anyone miss the meeting? Did the async replacement work? In most cases, the answer is: nothing broke, a few people missed it for a week, and the replacement worked fine. After a month, the cancellation becomes permanent and nobody looks back. Calculate your savings with our meeting cost calculator and share the results with the team — it reinforces the behavior and motivates further optimization.