Management: Costing the Conferences

Businessmen are always talking about ways to end that chronic corporate ailment, the time-wasting conference. Now Danish Engineer Søren T. Lyngsø 46, head of a Copenhagen-based industrial instrument firm, has come forward with a conference-room conversation stopper: a sort of electronic tote board that reminds company staffers that talk is far from cheap.

Based on Lyngsø's conviction that at least "half the time spent in executive conferences is unproductive," his $650 "Econometer" continually informs conferees of the rising amount of company treasure, in terms of salaries, expended as meetings go on and on. Programmed with the salaries of the participants, the device starts with the push of a button and, on a wall-mounted Scoreboard, flashes a minute-by-minute reckoning of the conference cost. The more and the mightier the brass, Lyngsø explains, "the more power is used, the faster the wheels run and the larger the bill becomes."

A tinkerer who started out in a small basement shop 16 years ago, Lyngsø credits the gadget with cutting down the proliferation of meetings that have come with the growth of his own firm, Søren T. Lyngsø, Dansk Servo Teknik, to two plants and 160 employees. He finds that the machine starts saving money even before conferences start: nowadays his managers whenever possible skip calling meetings rather than watch the machine add up the cost.