Originally published on Medium and co-written with Pierre Charreau.

Have you ever wondered how much a meeting costs your company? If you don't have the answer to this question, the HBR calculator will give you the answer. For example, the cost of a meeting with 10 employees paid 50k/year is around 400€ (excluding additional expenses: logistics, lunches, etc.).

We hold meetings because they help us move forward and make decisions in the company. Yet we all know that frustrating moment when we debate without real arbitration and endlessly hold meetings, gradually losing efficiency and agility. This is the syndrome of meeting overload.

Is there a solution?

The more participants in a meeting, the less productive it is. To address this problem, you can learn from Jeff Bezos and adopt the 2 pizza rule: if 2 pizzas wouldn't be enough to feed the table, you are too many!

Or in some cases, you can make your mini prototype and get everyone on the same page in 1 minute. ⏱

Let's imagine a team that needs to implement a new product. When A, the project leader, explains his revolutionary idea α to the group, B understands β, C understands γ, and D understands δ. Impossible to convince, because none of them understood the idea. Why? Simply because when you describe an idea, you ask the other person to project themselves and their conception will be influenced by their imagination (or lack of imagination).

A prototype? 🤔

With a prototype, team A could have communicated their idea and allowed the group to collectively project themselves thanks to a shared imagination. But at this stage, what does a prototype mean?

From idea to prototype

Last weekend, we participated in a TechCrunch competition, where we had to design an application using IBM Watson artificial intelligence within 24 hours. These time and technical constraints forced the team to be at the maximum of their productivity, and communication was the first factor of success.

Before running in this code and design marathon, the first step is to get everyone on the same page regarding the application to develop. A mini prototype then allows avoiding going in all directions.

The photo below represents our first prototype. This simple drawing made it possible to align the team in just a few minutes on the key features to develop, with clear objectives.

Prototype 0.1 of an idea

The first prototype allowed the team to project themselves in the same direction and to have constructive discussions. After a few pencil modifications, a more detailed second prototype could be imagined:

First iteration

At this stage, we were able to define a concrete action plan and clearly separate tasks to jointly develop the application:

• Two people on artificial intelligence (back-end)