First law of worker entropy
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Conference Call Anatomy™
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The JC’s first law of worker entropy (also known as the “meeting paradox”):
- (i) The probability of a meeting starting on time can never be 100%;
- (ii) As the number of scheduled participants increases, that probability tends to zero.
- (iii) The more participants there are the more retarded the starting time (and content) of the meeting will be.
This is true of any meeting containing more than one person. (A single-person meeting, of course, ought not, in a sensible mind, count, at least since Otto Büchstein asserted its incoherence through his maxim “convenimus ergo es”).
This is because the distribution of arrival times to the meeting is asymmetrically distributed at or past the scheduled start time. No one[1] arrives early, some people arrive late, and experienced meeting participants know of this asymmetric distribution and therefore time their own arrival to the expected functional starting time of the meeting, which in turn further retards that average start time.
The functional starting time of a meeting is, thus not a constant but a variable, proportional to its intended population, but conditioned by the cultural disposition of its members. A meeting in Switzerland will start on time regardless of how many attendees are expected due to the overwhelming power of früheankunftfreude, whose effects are barely felt in London.
As with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, there are logical indeterminacies involved with congregating in a business environment. these have led to a recent extension of the JC’s first law, thus:
- A meeting with a definite justification only has an approximate probability of ever happening, whereas a meeting which is certain to happen only has an impressionistic reason to exist at all.
As, per Heisenberg, existence and justification cannot be simultaneously determined, it leads one to the conclusion that a meeting that one is presently attending, and that therefore definitely exists, must have only an indeterminate point, whereas the sort of meeting one would like to have — ones which would solve perennial problems, achieve useful things and do so in a way that was quick, simple, effective, and which imbued each attendee with a revitalised sense of vigour and purpose — these meetings cannot be certain to happen at all and, if they do happen, are likely to be highjacked for some ulterior, indeterminately consequential purpose.
See also
References
- ↑ Outside the German-speaking countries: Peculiar cultural factors (particularly späteankunftschande and früheankunftfreude) are at work here which can skew the calculation, but do not displace the general thrust of the theory.