I had heard about this 7-38-55 rule previously but a friend asked recently if this may be one of the drivers for return to office. Seems like an interesting argument at first blush - if the body language is what conveys the majority of information in a communication makes sense that people are in the same room. Reality of in-person meetings and discussions these days is that people are continuously distracted by their phones and watches if on the rare occasion that they show up without their laptop. There is always someone who is triple booked and has prioritized your meeting over their other two and be in the room with you.
This person has a third of their attention on the conversation while they field messages coming from the two other discussions that they are not available for. It may turn out that this individual is also crucial to arriving at a solution to the problem you have. Their retention rate based on the formula is at most 18% of what they see of the body language in the room assuming they are observing everyone all the time. Since that is impossible given their pre-occupations with other threads of conversations happening online, we could say they are probably getting less than 10% of what is visually happening in the room.
At that point the value of this whole push to get a bunch of people face to face with each other to improve productivity, expedite decision-making etc., turns a bit ridiculous. Everyone could have stayed home and the issue could have been resolved via email with only about 3% less effectiveness. There was a time when people were not carrying laptops everywhere they went, when cellphones were not ubiquitous and your watch just told time and nothing else.
In that day and age, when a few people huddled together to resolve a problem, there was focus on the problem at hand and the people who had assembled to talk it over. There were no distractions in the room. You could only be in one meeting at a time because it took place in a physical location. The triple-booked individual would need to make a clear commitment - could nota accept one and be tentative on the two others and keep channels open for messages. In that world, it is quite possible that efficiency of meeting in person well exceeded all other forms of communication. The fact is we no longer live in that world so those numbers need a serious review to give us data that we can actually use to help us in our times.
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