Jennifer, the Chief of Staff at Gelly, a Public Relations and Marketing agency, was in for another long night. Only a few weeks remained before the start of Gelly’s inaugural global leadership gathering. Eighty leaders from across the company and across the world would gather virtually where many would have their first opportunity to meet their peers.

Around a Zoom call on a Thursday evening sat Jennifer, her CEO, executive assistant, and head of Human Resources. Since they had last met, the gathering agenda had ballooned from a manageable four to a massive nine pages. With each passing day more was happening in the business to necessitate additional sessions, Jennifer explained. An initial call for presenters resulted in a double-sided spreadsheet. Scheduled lunch breaks were quickly shortened to accommodate the growing list of departments who wanted air time. And as the conference call clocked on, the group wondered how to do more with less.

A common gathering challenge explained

Jennifer’s gathering highlights a common challenge and an even more common temptation - the temptation to overpack. This temptation extends beyond our travel habits and into the way we bring people together whether in person or virtually. It’s all too easy to stuff the suitcase.

Is more better? When we view information as the main lever to shift people from A to B, we assume it is. When content is king, we pile our gatherings with it. The prevailing notion is one of efficiency. As long as everyone is in one place, it’s best to give them as much information as we can, we think. Let’s not waste a minute of our time, we say. 

These gatherings quickly become laundry lists of sessions and disparate topics where the information is the star and the predetermined solution. And especially in high stakes gatherings like Jennifer’s with multiple stakeholders and opinions, agendas naturally pile up. The more people, the more content. The more clothes, the bigger the suitcase. When we view the only deterrent as more space, we add more.

Sure, we can buy a bigger suitcase. But that doesn’t solve the core issue. We know this doesn’t scale. 

Why this temptation? One reason is the implicit belief that one’s information signals one’s involvement and a fear of missing out if not included. Another is our history. 

“What information should we push out?”. Though well-intentioned, we’ve mistakenly started with this question for decades. In the old days, or even as recent as the pre-internet 1980s, information was scarce and therefore more valuable. Because of this, we often came together to hear information we couldn’t get anywhere else.

Today, information is everywhere. And I mean, everywhere. We don't need to gather for it.

Still, many of us have only experienced one end of the gathering spectrum: information overload. We know the formula: sit, wait, listen, someone talks. This familiarity stretches back to childhood and its educational institutions where many of us grew up with the classroom as the primary gathering experience during our formative years. We were instructed to sit quietly and listen to the information. 

This predominant paradigm created a widespread expectation; the role of a participant is to learn by being a consumer of information. And, no matter the occasion or the intention, this is often still the default. Because this is what we tend to experience most, we understandably assume it’s ripe for replication. Slides. Content. Words. And a lot of it. So much in fact it can get in the way of others absorbing our message.

The risks of information overload

We risk not just a heavy suitcase but a heavy cognitive load. 

Cognitive load refers to the amount of information that our working memory can hold at one time. According to the Cognitive Load Theory developed by John Sweller, the way we share information can either aid or obstruct that working memory. Our brains can only hold so much. When too much information is shared at once, we become overwhelmed and much of the information is lost. This is especially true if the content is complex or not directly relevant. 

Before we blame it all on the brain we can consider another truth. Much of this information we can in fact just as easily consume on our own and on our own time. “Can you just send me the slides?” is a phrase we often utter or wish we could especially in a virtual setting. Gatherings like Gelly’s balloon when we forget that people may be gathering for other reasons besides information. 

We gather for connection more than information

That’s because, when we’re a part of a gathering that transforms us, it’s rarely just because of the content we consume, it’s how we connect to it. Still, we often place our investment on the information without understanding how or if others will, in fact, connect to it. 

Many of Jennifer’s stakeholders were focused inward. They wanted to share what was important to them instead of what might be important to their audience. Instead of pushing information, we can pull on something for people to take up as their own. We can measure success in how much space, time, or how many slides we take up. Or, we can measure our ability to bring people along with us. It’s not about what’s in the suitcase. It’s about where it allows us to go. 

Gelly’s agenda ballooned in part because the call for participation lacked clarity. Jennifer found herself inundated with requests for extra sessions when every department assumed they needed to take part. When we don’t know where we’re headed, our suitcase will quickly fill to the brim. 

We mean well when we invite everyone. We want to be inclusive, or we want to fill the time, we want to share as much as we can, or make it as relevant as possible to a wide group of people. Naturally, we pack more in. Like a game of whack-a-mole, we aim to hit ‘em all - a session from finance, HR, marketing, the list goes on. 

A success metric based on quantity is how gatherings get muddled and diluted instead of crystal clear. It is this clarity that drives not only efficiency but effectiveness.  

But many gatherings I’ve been a part of don’t know what their destination is - they just want to go somewhere and fast. This is why we throw everything in the suitcase. 

Gatherings, like any change effort, are meant to help us get from A to B. From one place to another. This is the essence of change. Without this clarity on where we’re headed, our car stays parked, or worse, we circle the block and end up right back where we started from. 

Lindsey Caplan is a screenwriter turned organizational psychologist who helps HR & business leaders create experiences that boost motivation, engagement, and performance

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