A committee approves a £10 million nuclear reactor in two and a half minutes. It then spends forty-five minutes arguing about a £350 bicycle shed. The coffee budget takes over an hour.
C. Northcote Parkinson wrote this down in 1957, and it has never stopped being true.
Stupidity has nothing to do with it. Nobody in the room understands reactors, so nobody can object without looking foolish. But everyone has seen a bike shed. Everyone drinks coffee. We comment where we feel competent, rather than where the stakes are highest.
A bicycle shed, a coffee machine, a button colour — these are where we can demonstrate we were paying attention. Familiar things create opinions; unfamiliar things create silence.
So the agenda quietly inverts. Hours on the small and visible, minutes on the complex and critical, and everyone leaves feeling the meeting went well.
The louder a meeting gets, the smaller the thing being decided.