After the meeting, the forgetting starts
A day after the meeting, nobody remembers exactly what was agreed. Why that happens and how to hold on to agreements.
The meeting was on Friday. Everyone nodded. On Monday, one colleague sends a quote for ten licences, while another had understood twenty. The customer calls, puzzled.
The problem
Agreements made in meetings evaporate. Microsoft research among 31,000 employees in 31 countries found that 55 percent find the next steps after a meeting unclear. 56 percent find it hard to summarise what a meeting actually achieved.
Everyone knows the consequences. Two people remember a different agreement. A promise to a customer is left hanging. And another meeting is called to work out what was decided in the last one.
The cause
It is not carelessness, it is how our memory works. As early as 1885, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus showed how quickly we forget new information. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam repeated his experiment in 2015 and found the same pattern: most of the forgetting happens in the first few hours. After that, it slows down.
Whatever you do not record within the hour becomes tomorrow's argument.
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On top of that, everyone moves straight on to the next meeting. Writing up the agreements slips to the end of the day, or to tomorrow. By then, much of it is already gone.
The solution
- Record agreements during or straight after the meeting, while they are still fresh.
- For every agreement, write down who does what and when.
- Share the agreements with all participants immediately, so everyone remembers the same thing.
Stiqqs takes notes during the conversation. The moment it ends, the summary, the agreements with who does what, and a follow-up email are ready. You read them through, adjust what needs adjusting and send. That takes a few minutes, not half a day.
The same goes for training
Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve does not only apply to agreements. After a training or workshop, most of it is gone within a week without repetition. Short repetitions in the weeks that follow make the knowledge stick and get used in practice. That is why we built Stiqqo: learning retention after training with Stiqqo