Energy Shift From Performative To Effective

Given there is an energy crisis, why is no effort being made to reduce consumption by encouraging more use of video calls? Most business travel is performative effort, not essential.

— Rory Sutherland (@rorysutherland) March 30, 2026

I've long been perplexed by The Sales approach to video calling.

There was a moment when salespeople, and their wider organisations, happily put their hands in the pocket for 'video' guidance. That 2020 moment proved fleeting.

Seldom did it breach the confines of (entry-level) 'tech' tips anyway. Let alone properly embrace the game-changing, competitor-outpacing, career-propelling underlying themes that truly set the video meeting salesperson apart.

The positer of the above has the unessential in is sights.

I concur. Yet not fully in the direction he suggests.

The term "business travel" is perhaps ambiguous. It evokes airport lounges, poolside admin and glamorous (that is, anywhere other 'normal') locales for post-meet 'networking'.

Yet it may just as well apply to driving three hours straight out your car park. And back.

"'Most" does a lot of lifting. Are fifty-one percent-plus of so-labelled engaging in the performative?

And what of "not essential"? For there are times when to clinch progress you simply must see 'the whites of their eyes'.

There is a significant angle not referenced here.

One I sense from being a long-time admirer of his output that the chap shares.

Namely, video meetings are not (always) a direct replacement of, and therefore in direct opposition with, the in-person event.

Yes, they are often seen as alternative to IRL. But they are underplayed as brilliant options over email threads, phone calls or singular imagery mic drops.

Those that win with videoing do so because they match the intended outcome to the apt medium.

In which case, business travel can often be bettered. Relieving your energy crisis of a different yet still stalling kind. Are you suitably fuelled?