The Meeting Has Recreated the Message
Everyone has gathered to discuss something that could have been read in two minutes. They have now been gathered for twenty-five minutes and have covered the same ground three times.
The information was available before the meeting started.
It was written down. It was clear. It required acknowledgment and possibly one question, neither of which required everyone to be present simultaneously. The meeting was called because someone felt that acknowledgment should happen in person, or because they could not gauge reaction from a message, or because meetings feel more official than messages, or for a reason they have not fully examined.
The meeting has been running for twenty-five minutes.
The Annual Review
Year in review: the information existed in written form. The meeting was scheduled to discuss it. The meeting covered the written information verbally. A document was created summarizing the verbal coverage. The document was circulated. Several people responded to the document by requesting a follow-up meeting.
The meeting was called because the message did not feel sufficient. The meeting has not added anything the message would not have contained. The meeting has, however, produced a recording, three action items, and a calendar invite for next quarter.
The Efficiency Calculation
A message would have taken four minutes to read. The meeting has taken thirty minutes and is currently in its question phase. The question phase will take twelve more minutes. The follow-up message summarizing the meeting will take seven minutes to write and three minutes to read.
Total time: fifty-two minutes for information that was available in four.
The difference, forty-eight minutes, is the cost of the meeting feeling official.
The Production of Follow-Up Items
Meetings generate follow-up items in the same way that certain chemical reactions produce byproducts. It is not the intended output but it is the consistent one. Three people have been assigned ownership of things that existed before the meeting. The ownership is now formally recorded.
This is valuable, in the same way that renaming a file is valuable: the thing now has a proper name and a known location, even though it is the same thing.
The Learning
Next month there will be another meeting. It will cover information that is available in writing. The same people will attend. The information will emerge in the same condition it entered, with the addition of action items and a follow-up date.
Nobody will suggest sending a message instead, because the last time someone suggested that, a meeting was called to discuss the suggestion.