What Each Mechanism Costs, in Minutes
An honest tally of the overhead, who carries it, and which mechanisms are not worth what they take.
three things · two reached them · the room side is not counted
What a week looks like once somebody is actually doing this.
Every mechanism in this collection, with what it actually carries and what it costs the room
About five a week, one minute each, carried by one named person: the best return in the list
Costs nothing extra at the moment of writing and is the part people leave out when hurried
Four minutes a week from the manager, and it is the only thing that catches drift
Ten minutes per call from somebody not leading it, and it needs naming in advance
A standing weekly line that cannot be left blank; the channel exists and almost nobody uses it
No sender, because nobody registers that anything was settled
Requires having been overheard, which is not a message and has nothing to carry it
seven things · four reached them · two with no channel at all · the room side is not counted
Seven items, four carried by about fifteen minutes a week in total, and two that nothing carries. The left side has no number: a room supplies all seven continuously and nobody counts it, so there is no proportion to compute and none is offered. One manager's own tally over a quarter; what any of this costs differs by team size and by how much is already written down.
The whole apparatus in this collection costs about fifteen minutes a week of a manager's time, plus a standing cost to the room in meeting format and spontaneity. Both numbers are worth stating, because unpriced overhead is what gets abandoned.
The practical lesson in “What Each Mechanism Costs, in Minutes” is that visibility must be designed rather than assumed. For teams exploring employee scheduling software, employee scheduling software can add consistent time and project context when the purpose is explicit, access is limited and managers review exceptions with the people involved.
Nothing here is free and nothing here is expensive.
Additional sector context for “What Each Mechanism Costs, in Minutes” is available from GuideStar nonprofit profiles. Check broad guidance against the team’s mission, funding obligations, workforce and jurisdiction.
The manager's weekly cost
Writing the decisions: five minutes. The priority restatement: four. The weekly summary at the top of the channel: four. Asking the person outside whether the mechanisms are still running: two.
Fifteen minutes, which is about half a per cent of a working week.
The manager's monthly cost
Reading the work of the people you do not see: two hours per person per quarter. Adding to the running file: fifteen minutes a month per person.
Here is where the real money goes, and it buys the evidence that everything else in this collection depends on.
Why that cost is reported honestly
Because it is the one most often disguised. Managers are told to know their people better without being told that it is several hours a quarter of uninterrupted reading, and when the hours are not found, the practice quietly becomes an intention.
Putting it in the calendar as a recurring block is the only version of this that survives, and most managers who try it discover they had never actually allocated the time at all.
The weekly tally, which is the whole of the time cost:
| Mechanism | Who | Minutes a week |
|---|---|---|
| Decisions written within the hour | Manager | 5 |
| Priorities restated | Manager | 4 |
| Summary at the top of the channel | Manager | 4 |
| Asking whether it is all still running | Manager | 2 |
| Written status before the one-to-one | The person outside | 5 |
| Reading the channel | The person outside | 25 |
The room's cost
Meetings held as calls one week in three. The rule that conclusions go in writing. Interruptions when somebody starts a side conversation. Occasionally losing a piece of work to somebody not present.
None of it is minutes; all of it is friction.
The cost to the person outside
The written status update before the one-to-one, five minutes. Reading the channel, five minutes a day. Preparing two things for every meeting in case a gap appears.
They pay the most per head, which is worth noticing.
Who actually pays each one
Worth setting out separately from the minutes, because the two do not line up. The cheapest items in time are paid by the manager; the expensive ones in friction are paid by the room; and the person outside pays the smallest number of minutes and the largest amount of attention.
Any proposal that puts the time cost on the person outside should be looked at twice. Writing their own status update is reasonable; maintaining the decision log, chasing people for context or reminding the room to write things down is not, and all three get handed over regularly.
What has the best return
Decisions written down within the hour, by a wide margin. One minute per decision, addressing the largest single loss.
Nothing else in this collection comes close on that ratio.
What has the worst
Anything requiring a template, a form or a status field. The cost scales and the carrying capacity does not.
Decision logs with six columns are the standard example.
Mechanisms not worth their cost
Full recordings of every meeting. Detailed minutes. Daily written stand-ups for a team of six. Shared calendars of everybody's availability maintained by hand.
All four are commonly recommended and all four cost more than they carry.
How to tell which is which
Ask what specific loss it addresses and whether a cheaper thing addresses the same loss. Most elaborate mechanisms are expensive versions of something two sentences would do.
The sorted list of losses is the tool for this.
The decay cost
Every mechanism needs a maintenance cost built in, because all of them decay. Two minutes a month of asking whether it is still happening is the whole regime.
A mechanism with no maintenance budgeted is a mechanism with a lifespan of about three weeks, which means its real cost is the whole of the setup effort divided by three weeks of use.
Reviewing the whole set
Once a quarter, list what is running, what it costs and what it carries. Stop one thing.
A set of practices that only grows will be abandoned entirely within a year, and stopping something deliberately is what prevents that.
What the tally does not include
The cost of the arrangement itself: the slower decisions, the thinner relationships, the work that does not get offered. Those are not overhead and they do not appear in any minutes column.
They are the subject of the final section, they are substantially larger than fifteen minutes a week, and no amount of efficient mechanism-running reduces them. Anybody presenting this collection as a way to make the arrangement costless has added up the wrong column.
Next door
- What to Stop Doing in the Room
- Writing the Decision Down Within the Hour
- Writing the Reason Beside It
- One Named Channel, and What Belongs In It
- The One-to-One That Is Not a Status Report
- Rotation: the Meeting, the Work, the Seat
- Saying Out Loud That Something Has Been Decided
- Why the Deliberate Invitation Feels Staged