Good morning.
“This meeting could have been an email,” is an expression that I’d argue has crossed everyone’s mind at least once. But Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce company, has implemented a meeting cost calculator to curb pointless group meetings. They’re all about clearing the calendar.
“Time is money, and it should be spent on helping our merchants succeed and not on unnecessary meetings,” according to Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister.
The new tool is part of the company’s year-long drive to reduce unnecessary gatherings. It works like a calculator that’s embedded in an employees' calendar app. It estimates the price tag of any meeting that has three or more people. Then it comes up with a price estimate by factoring in the average compensation data across roles and departments, with the amount of people attending, and meeting length. The program was built by the chief operating officer Kaz Nejatian.
The average cost of a 30-minute meeting with three employees can run from $700 up to $1,600, Shopify found. But if there’s an exec in the meeting, you’re looking at $2,000 and more.
Shopify sent me an example of a calendar invite for a one-hour meeting, with seven people, including two C-suite execs—Kaz and Tobi Lütke, the CEO and founder. The estimated meeting cost is $2,115.
At the beginning of the year, Shopify implemented a “Chaos monkey” meeting policy, where meetings were not banned outright, but employees were told to cancel all recurring meetings involving more than three people. And if they’re prompted to do so, the meeting cost calculator is now a deterrent.
When Shopify removed 12,000 meetings at the start of the new year, they projected they would cut 322,000 hours and 474,000 discrete events for all of 2023, according to the company.
How is the meeting initiative panning out in the finance organization? As the CFO, Hoffmeister shared his perspective.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Fortune: The CFO has increasingly become more collaborative with the organization. But does this calendar initiative mean that you are in fewer meetings?
Yes, I’ve seen the number of meetings on my calendar decrease. At the start of 2023, we canceled 12,000 calendar series and events and reinstated ‘no meeting Wednesdays.’ The average time per person spent in meetings is down 14% when comparing the first five months of last year with the first five months of this year. Time spent in meetings on Wednesday is down about 26% per person.
The new tool is part of the company’s year-long drive to reduce unnecessary gatherings. From a CFO's perspective, how does this enhance value creation for the company?
After we unleashed Chaos Monkey in January, we knew we would have to keep pushing the boundaries to keep unnecessary meetings off the calendar. The Shopify Meeting Cost Calculator is meant to help our teams approach meetings intentionally, so they can stay focused on the crafting.
Are you keeping finance meetings to less than three people?
There is no hard and fast rule for the number of people included in meetings. The calculator is meant to help all of our teams approach meetings intentionally. This is the next step on our journey of building the right systems and enabling more productive outputs to benefit our merchants.
For the broader calendar campaign, what is Shopify doing regarding best practices for management and senior leadership?
To best serve the millions of merchants that use our platform, our people need focus, time, and attention—harnessing these resources takes intentional effort, including habit and the right systems. We’re always considering new strategies and methods to reinforce all of the changes and ensure people at all levels continue to have uninterrupted time. We believe that agility and speed are skills that we as a company should encourage and hone, and, as such, takes practice and reinforcement.
Have a good weekend.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
