One less meeting, one more friend

I have accompanied a lot of technical missions over the years. British hosts, Latin American visitors, a full programme of back-to-back meetings, and lunch served in the same room where the morning session just ended.

Wraps. Sandwiches. Crisps on the side.

Eaten standing up, between conversations, in forty-five minutes before the afternoon slot begins.

Every time I see it, I think the same thing: this is where the mission loses half its value; and nobody in the room knows it.

The friction

For the British host, lunch is functional. Nutrients in, politeness observed, time respected. The real work happens in meetings — structured, agendaed, minuted. The more meetings in a day, the better use of everyone's time. Lunch is a gap to fill efficiently.

For the Latin American visitor, lunch is the meeting that matters most. It is where they decide whether they trust the people they have just spent the morning with. Whether they like them. Whether they would want to work with them beyond this visit. Information can be emailed. Alignment can be rescheduled. Trust can only be built face to face, over time, without an agenda.

Neither side is wrong. They are operating with completely different assumptions about what the day is actually for.

Slot v. Flow in action

This is a relational dimension friction, but it wears a temporal disguise. It looks like a scheduling decision — how long to allocate for lunch, whether to keep it in the meeting room — when it is actually a trust-building decision.

In LatAm Flow logic, the meal is not a break from the work. It is the work. The conversation over food is where a Latin American counterpart forms their read of you as a person, the read that determines whether the agreements reached in the morning sessions will actually translate into follow-through.

A working lunch with sandwiches signals, unintentionally but clearly: we have more important things to do than to sit with you. That signal lands before the afternoon meetings have even started.

The fix is not complicated. Book a table somewhere nearby. Sit down. Order properly. Talk about something other than the agenda. Two hours away from the meeting room is not time lost, it is the most productive investment of the entire visit.

The question

Think of the last time you hosted a Latin American delegation. What did you serve for lunch and what did that choice communicate before you said a word?

Until next Tuesday,

Cecilia

Founder, Multilateral Studio  ·  Author, Slot v Flow