Hi [First Name OR there],
I published a new piece today called “The Sync Tax.”
The core idea: most of what fills your team’s meeting calendar is information transfer dressed up as collaboration.
Announcements, reminders, status updates.
All one-directional. All consuming live time that could be a Slack post.
The expensive part is what gets crowded out…
— the strategy conversation that keeps getting pushed, the process question nobody has time to think through.
One firm changed one thing about their Monday all-hands.
Saved 7 hours a week across the team.
Same information, same people — different channel.
The piece walks through how to see it, what it costs, and what to do about it.
Read “The Sync Tax” here.
Kathryn Brown
Hi [First Name OR there],
On Monday I wrote about the sync tax — the cost of meetings filled with information transfer instead of collaboration.
The article shows you how to see it. This tool shows you what it costs.
I built the Meeting ROI Scorecard. You enter your 3 most important recurring meetings, answer two questions about each, and it grades them on what they produce.
Most people expect green across the board. They don’t get it.
The one that feels collaborative — the one everyone says is valuable — often scores C or D because it hasn’t produced a decision in months.
Takes under 3 minutes.
Kathryn Brown
Hi [First Name OR there],
A CEO I work with records a five-minute voicemail every Friday.
That’s it. Five minutes. She covers the week’s announcements, recognition, upcoming deadlines. An AI agent structures it into a Slack post that hits every team member’s channel before Monday morning.
Before that voicemail existed, all five of those items lived in a Monday all-hands. Twelve people, 60 minutes, three time zones. Every week.
She didn’t cancel the meeting. She changed what it was for.
Monday went from 60 minutes to 25. The 35 minutes she freed up across 12 people? That’s where the stuck client situation got discussed. That’s where the process question stopped getting bumped to next month.
The constraint was what the meeting was full of.
Most firms I work with have at least one meeting like this — running every week, full of broadcasts, no room left for the work that needs live time.
The Systems Diagnostic is where we figure out which meeting that is and what to do about it. Book yours here.
Kathryn Brown
Hi [First Name OR there],
I would like to meet with you this week to cover 3 things, one-on-one:
First, the meeting on your calendar that’s consuming the most collaborative time for the least collaborative work.
Second, what the information in that meeting needs — and which channel fits better than live time.
Third, whether the Systems Diagnostic makes sense for redesigning how your team syncs.
I’m booking these conversations through Friday.
Find a time on my calendar here.
Kathryn Brown
PS: If a call doesn’t make sense right now, the piece I published this week walks through the sync tax — the hidden cost of meetings full of broadcasts. Read it here.
Hi [First Name OR there],
The article I published this week explained the sync tax — the cost of meetings filled with information transfer instead of collaboration.
The briefing I’m releasing today shows what happened when we fixed it.
One firm. One Monday all-hands. I’ll walk you through what we found when we decoded their agenda, how we redesigned the workflow, and what changed in the first month.
15 minutes. No slides. Just the case, start to finish.
It comes down Saturday night. After that, the article and tools stay live — but the behind-the-scenes walkthrough is gone.
Kathryn Brown