The time spent on minutes
It listens to the call or the video call, then writes the note: decisions, commitments, open points. You review, you approve. Nobody spends their evenings writing what they were not hired to write.
Facing: the minutes.
We forget, and it costs.
We look again for answers we already had. We redo what has already been done. We contradict the last meeting. A new joiner takes months to get up to speed. A quarter of team time goes to looking for answers (Atlassian, 2025). 42 % of what a company knows is written down nowhere (Panopto, 2018). In France, more than a third of permanent contracts end within the first year (DARES, 2015).
A hard drive fills up. A brain learns.
The shared drive, the document system, the wiki, the note tool stacking up transcripts: the same problem under different names. They store. They do not learn. They do not forget either, and that is worse: the true and the outdated sit side by side, and a search brings back one or the other at random.
A drive answers « here are 40 documents containing the word budget ». A brain answers « the website budget was set at 12,000 euros on 3 April, it replaces the 8,000 euros from February, here is the meeting ». Your drive stays: it is one of our senses.
Take a meeting that comes back every week. See what it really costs you.
What is lost around it
Cautious, median or high. These are the three scenarios from our study on the real cost of a meeting.
This meeting costs you $557 every time.
The time of the participants$376
5 participants × 1.00 h × $75.20/h = $376 per meeting, × 90 meetings a year = $33,840
The minutes$31
1.00 h × 0.40 × $77.00/h = $31 per meeting, × 90 meetings a year = $2,772
notes during the meeting, writing, review, sharing, that is 24 minutes per hour of meeting
What is lost around it$150
40 % of $376 = $150 per meeting, × 90 meetings a year = $13,536
Over a year, this one topic costs you $50,148.
90 meetings, 486 hours of work, that is 69.4 days.
Across your 12 topics followed in parallel: $601,776 a year.
An order of magnitude, to adjust with your own figures.
What it costs today
What KISMO changes
The minutes
notes during the meeting, writing, review, sharing, that is 24 minutes per hour of meeting
What was never captured.
Handwritten notes keep only half to 60 % of the ideas.
(Crawford 1925, Hartley and Cameron 1967, Maddox and Hoole 1975, Locke 1977)
What was forgotten.
Around 70 % of what is said in an exchange is forgotten within twenty-four hours.
(Ebbinghaus 1885, replicated by Murre and Dros, PLOS ONE, 2015)
Forgetting
Every conversation leaves a usable record, including the unscheduled call and the unplanned video call. The meeting no longer has to be replayed from memory.
Facing: what was never captured, what was forgotten.
Verified knowledge
Nothing enters without human approval. Every piece of knowledge carries its sources and its status, and the Brain answers by citing the meeting it comes from. You keep the last word.
Facing: what was never captured.
What people looked for.
A quarter of team time goes to looking for answers, and 56 % of employees say the only way to get information is to ask someone. 8.2 hours a week go to searching, asking again, recreating.
(Atlassian, State of Teams, 2025 ; APQC, 2021)
Your existing documents
What you have already written, recorded or received enters the Brain: documents, web pages, recordings from an old box, emails. You do not start from a blank page.
Facing: what people looked for.
Access for newcomers
Someone who joins questions the Brain instead of interrupting colleagues, and gains autonomy on written facts. Give your new joiners the context, not only the access rights.
Facing: what people looked for.
What was said again.
57 % of meetings are unscheduled calls, with no invitation, the ones that never produce minutes.
(Microsoft, The Infinite Workday, 2025)
Contradictions
On Monday we said 2 metres, on Thursday 3 metres. It knows which one is the latest, it shows both versions with their dates, and your owner decides. We stop deciding on what is out of date.
Facing: what was said again.
What was never followed up.
55 % of participants struggle to know the next steps after a meeting, 56 % to summarise what happened.
(Microsoft, Work Trend Index, 2023)
The client relationship
What did we tell the client on Monday? It answers, with sources. Commitments hold, because they are written somewhere people can find them.
Facing: what was never followed up.
A hard drive fills up. A brain learns.
Sources
- Atlassian, State of Teams 2025, mars 2025, 12 000 travailleurs du savoir et 200 dirigeants : 25 % du temps passé à chercher des réponses ; 56 % doivent demander à quelqu'un ou programmer une réunion. Open the source
- APQC, novembre 2021, 982 travailleurs du savoir : 8,2 heures par semaine perdues à chercher, redemander, recréer. Open the source
- Panopto et YouGov, Workplace Knowledge and Productivity Report, juillet 2018, 1 001 salariés américains : 42 % du savoir propre à l'individu ; 5,3 heures par semaine. Open the source
- Microsoft, Work Trend Index, 2023 : 55 % ont du mal à savoir les prochaines étapes après une réunion, 56 % à résumer ce qui s'est passé. Open the source
- Microsoft, The Infinite Workday, 2025 : 57 % des réunions sont des appels improvisés, sans invitation.
- Murre et Dros, PLOS ONE, 2015, réplication de la courbe d'oubli d'Ebbinghaus : environ 70 % du contenu oublié en vingt-quatre heures. Open the source
- Crawford 1925, Hartley et Cameron 1967, Maddox et Hoole 1975, Locke 1977 : les notes prises à la main retiennent 50 à 60 % des idées principales.
Method
- Hourly costs are full employer costs, by profile, from our study on the real cost of a meeting. They are estimates built from official national averages (INSEE for France, Statistics Canada and the Institut de la statistique du Québec for Quebec, the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the United States), and can be replaced with your own figures.
- The time spent on minutes is 0.4 hour per hour of meeting: notes during the meeting, writing, review and sharing.
- What is lost around it is estimated as a share of the cost of meeting time, under three scenarios: cautious at 20 %, median at 40 %, high at 60 %. It is an order of magnitude of the value destroyed, not an amount observed.
- The year counts 45 working weeks, net of holidays, public holidays and absences.
- This document puts no figure on any saving and constitutes no commitment on results.
These amounts are estimates built from your assumptions and the studies cited. They describe a current situation, they measure no result obtained with KISMO and constitute no commitment. Amounts exclude tax.
This meeting: $557 · Over a year: $50,148