It is historical precedent. Having everyone sit slackjawed through twenty minutes of droning is no more proof that they received the relevant information than emailing them would be - that’s why schools have exams and other assessment on the knowledge they intend to impart.

I'm sympathetic to this knowing how few people actually read their emails (and slacks etc.). If you've ever sent out a 30 second survey to your coworkers, you know what I'm talking about. But I also know people don't really pay attention in these meetings either.

I feel async communication could work this way with the right cultural hygiene (e.g. consistent labeling, brevity, novelty, and relevancy), and some places I've worked were better about this than others, but they all tend to suffer from tragedy of the commons. If anyone works somewhere where you and all your coworkers actually count on each other to read emails, please tell me where!

The reason people don't read email is that companies have poisoned their communication channels. If an important email is right beside a practically junk message, it will be lost.

An interesting aspect of this: Where I work, an email subject line including "important" or "urgent" is a 99% indication for junk...

90% of the work emails I received were indistinguishable from spam. And they were sent by my employer.

“Did you know HR has an XYZ workshop” or “Look at what your coworkers are saying on Internal Company Social Network” (that I never once logged into). Literal spam. It’s no wonder I became completely desensitized to email notifications from my own employer’s domain.

So an email? You could not read the email, but I can just as easily not pay attention.

You have a way better chance of getting people to pay attention to a few paragraph email than that same information stretched to fill an hour.

However, it's a lot more socially acceptable to say "I missed the email" than "I sat there for 30min while you were talking but didn't actually listen"...