For certain things, yes. For other things, no. For instance, I find "all hands" meetings at work to be a complete waste of time, except maybe for the possibility of socializing or getting a free lunch. I could learn everything I need to know from these meetings in a few minutes just by reading an email, instead of wasting an hour of my time listening to bosses drone on and on about stuff or show photos of their families and dogs.

Basically, I think the key is latency. If you need to communicate two-way to work out issues, then you want low latency (because each response of yours depends on the other party's last response), so speech is quickest. (There's also texting, but that sucks because the data entry method is so slow; I don't know why so many people prefer it to talking, even for conducting intimate relationships.) However, if the communication is one-way (like your company disseminating some general information for all employees), then at least for me, reading is much, much faster than listening to someone talk.