Meeting Matrix Template: Decide Which Meetings to Keep, Shrink, or Kill

A meeting matrix is a simple grid that scores every recurring meeting against a few fixed criteria — so you can decide what to keep, shrink, or cancel without guessing or office politics. Below is a copy-paste template, plus a five-step way to run it across your team.

The Meeting Matrix Template

Score each recurring meeting from 0–2 on five criteria. Add the scores. The total tells you the verdict: keep it, shrink it, or kill it.

Scoring guide: 0 = no / rarely, 1 = sometimes, 2 = yes / almost always. A total of 8–10 = keep, 4–7 = shrink (fewer people, less often, or shorter), 0–3 = kill or rebuild from scratch.

The Attendance Matrix (who actually needs to be there)

The second matrix fixes the most common waste: people sitting in meetings they don't need. Map each recurring meeting against roles, and mark why each person is there.

Anyone marked Informed or Optional doesn't need to attend live — a written summary does the job. If a person has no clear role in a meeting, that's your cut. This is a lighter cousin of a RACI matrix for meetings; use RACI when you also need to pin down who owns the follow-up.

How to Score Each Meeting

The five criteria are deliberately blunt. They force an honest answer instead of "well, it's useful to stay in the loop."

1. Clear purpose

Can you name the one job this meeting does — decide, coordinate, or inform? If it does three things vaguely, it scores low.

2. A decision gets made

Status and information can move async. Live time is for decisions and real debate. If nothing gets decided, ask why it's a meeting.

3. The right people are in the room

Everyone present either decides or actively contributes. Spectators score this down.

4. The frequency fits the work

A weekly meeting for a monthly decision is five wasted hours a month. Match the schedule to how often the work actually changes.

5. It's worth the cost

Eight people for an hour isn't "a meeting" — it's a full working day of salary. If the output doesn't beat that, it fails.

How to Run the Matrix: Step by Step

Step 1 — List every recurring meeting

Pull the recurring invites off your team's calendars. Don't include one-offs — recurring meetings are where the hidden cost lives.

Step 2 — Score each against the five criteria

Do it fast and honestly. First instinct is usually right. Involve the team: ask each person to score the meetings they attend, then compare.

Step 3 — Sort into Keep, Shrink, Kill

Use the score bands. Most teams find a third of their recurring meetings land in shrink or kill on the first pass.

Step 4 — Make the changes (and handle pushback)

Killing a meeting feels risky, so name a safety net: you can bring it back in a month if something breaks. For the conversation, keep it simple:

"We're cutting the Thursday sync. If a decision needs the whole group before then, we'll call it ad hoc. Let's try two weeks without it and see what we actually miss."

Step 5 — Re-check in 30 days

Put a reminder in. A matrix you run once drifts back within a quarter as new recurring invites creep in. Re-score quarterly.

Three Teams, Three Results

12-person startup: scored 9 recurring meetings, killed 2 and shrank 3. Freed ~6 hours per person per week.

60-person scale-up: found three overlapping "sync" meetings with the same five attendees. Merged into one. Saved roughly 40 person-hours a month.

200-person org: ran the attendance matrix only. Cut average attendee count on standing meetings from 9 to 5 — same decisions, half the room.

Common Mistakes

Scoring from memory instead of the calendar

People underestimate their own meeting load by a wide margin. Score from the actual recurring invites, not from how busy you feel.

Shrinking everything, killing nothing

Shrink is the comfortable choice. Some meetings need to die. If nothing lands in the kill column, you scored too generously.

Running it once and calling it done

Meeting load regrows. Without a quarterly re-check, you'll be back where you started by next quarter.

How Spry Makes This Faster

Filling the matrix by hand means digging through calendars and guessing at cost. Spry does that part for you. Its calendar analytics show meeting load per person and per team, the real cost of each recurring meeting based on attendee compensation, and which meetings are eating deep-work time — so you can score the matrix from data instead of memory, and track whether the cuts actually stuck week over week.

See your team's meeting load → Request access to Spry

FAQs

What is a meeting matrix?

A meeting matrix is a grid that evaluates each recurring meeting against fixed criteria — like purpose, decisions made, and cost — so you can decide which meetings to keep, shrink, or cancel based on evidence rather than habit.

How is a meeting matrix different from a RACI matrix?

A RACI matrix maps who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for work and decisions. A meeting matrix is narrower: it judges whether a meeting should exist at all and who needs to attend. Many teams use both together.

How often should I run it?

Do a full scoring pass once a quarter, and run a quick attendance check whenever a new recurring meeting is added. Meeting load creeps back if you leave it unchecked.

What score means a meeting should be cancelled?

On the five-criteria, 0–2 scale, a total of 0–3 signals a meeting that should be killed or rebuilt from scratch. A total of 4–7 means shrink it; 8–10 means keep it.