After a meeting, some people send a short summary to ensure all parties involved leave the table with the same understanding of what has been said. Traditional ‘meeting minutes’ generally are too formal, but an overview of action items in the IDA-ly (or DAI-ly) format often is useful.

In approximately 95% of the cases (in my life), the understanding was mutual, but in about 3% of the cases unclarities are being resolved immediately afterwards, thereby facilitating appropriate follow-up actions. With one or two partners, significantly higher up in the food chain than yours truly, I have encountered that reactions followed like “We did not discuss that at all” leading to utter perplexity on my side. Explanations like major errors or deliberately false statements on either side I consider to be only theoretical possibilities.

One more feasible explanation would be the following hypothesis: a person of high status – who is not used to significant push-back – has a tendency to become ‘intellectually lazy’ and might develop a habit that whatever he says will be accepted by the conversation partner. Especially in a tense situation when he makes a one-sided statement he might have a tendency to interpret that piece of ‘Information’ to be accepted by the other, so registers it as a mutual ‘Decision’ with consent. If the other party makes an ‘Information’ statement however, that piece might not register in his mind, so is not really ‘heard’ at all. This explanation seems impossible to verify without an over-the-top scientific experiment. For now it is the best explanation I have found, though, but I am open for better ones.