[SATIRE]

SEATTLE — Apex Systems announced a new efficiency protocol Tuesday. To ensure meetings are productive, employees must now schedule a “Pre-Meeting Alignment Sync” before sending any calendar invite. The company claims this 30-minute session will streamline the actual meeting.

The new policy requires organizers to answer three questions before they can book a room. Then, they must present those answers to a supervisor. “We realized people were just talking to each other without a framework,” said Mateo Petrov, VP of Strategic Cadence. “That is dangerous. Now, before two colleagues can discuss a project, they must sit down and define the ‘North Star’ of that discussion. If that takes longer than the actual chat, that is the price of clarity.”

Early results show that calendars are now 400% fuller. Staff members report spending their entire morning preparing for the afternoon planning session. One team spent four hours debating the agenda for a fifteen-minute standup. “It creates a perfect audit trail,” explained Chloe Washington, Director of Human Bandwidth. “We ask: Who is the owner of this topic? What is the measurable outcome? And why did you not just send an email? We debate that last question for about twenty minutes. Usually, we decide it should be a meeting anyway, just to be safe.”

Washington noted that the goal is to make scheduling so painful that employees stop talking entirely. “Silence is the ultimate productivity hack,” she added.

At press time, Apex Systems announced a mandatory “Post-Meeting Retro.” This new session will allow teams to review the minutes of the Pre-Meeting to ensure the alignment was aligned.

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