Could This Meeting Have Been an Email?
Answer a few questions and get a score. Plus the actual salary cost of the meeting.
Did the meeting have an agenda beforehand?
Were actual decisions made during the meeting?
Was a follow-up email sent summarising what was discussed?
Was it primarily a status update?
Did anyone ask questions that could have been Googled?
Was most of it just people saying "FYI" to each other?
Were there people on the call who said nothing at all?
Borderline
Could go either way. Some of this needed the room, some of it really didn't.
Meeting cost: approx. $90 in salary time — answer the questions above to sharpen the score
This tool scores a meeting on a scale of 0 to 100 for how likely it was to have been replaceable by an email, based on a set of questions about what actually happened.
Not every meeting is a waste. Some meetings make decisions, build trust, and move things forward in ways that a written summary genuinely cannot. But a meaningful number of them are status updates, information transfers, and conversations that could have been a three-paragraph email that everyone reads in their own time. This tells you which kind yours was.
How the score works
The score starts at 50 and moves up or down based on your answers. Signs of a meeting that could have been an email (status updates, no decisions, silent attendees, a follow-up email was sent anyway) push the score higher. Signs it was actually needed (agenda, real decisions, cross-functional alignment) push it lower.
Questions
What makes a meeting worthwhile?
Generally: decisions being made that require real-time discussion, creative problem solving that benefits from back-and-forth, or situations where tone and relationship matter more than information transfer. If none of those apply, it was probably an email.
Why does a follow-up email push the score up?
Because if you had to summarise everything in an email afterwards, the email could have gone first. The follow-up email is often proof that the information could have been written down before anyone got in a room.
What should I do with this score?
Mostly: reflect. If your meetings are consistently scoring high, it might be worth looking at how they're set up. An agenda, a clear goal, and an invite list limited to people who need to be there covers most of the problem.
Meeting finally over? Here's what to do with the time you just got back.