Symptoms
- The same decision is relitigated in different forums every week.
- Two team members are working on incompatible assumptions for two weeks before anyone notices.
- Sponsors hear updates from multiple sources and they conflict.
- A side-channel (DM, hallway) becomes the "real" place decisions get made.
Root causes
- Psychological safety gap — people don't feel safe disagreeing publicly, so they disagree privately.
- Status meetings instead of decision meetings — public meetings inform, side conversations decide.
- Decisions without owners — nobody's on the hook to make the call, so it gets relitigated.
- Different stakeholders hearing different stories — usually a PM problem.
↳ the smell test
If the meeting after the meeting is more important than the meeting, your meeting is broken. The fix isn't adding another meeting — it's making the existing meeting safe enough that the real conversation happens there.
Concrete fixes
- End every meeting with explicit decisions, owners, and dates. Written down.
- If a decision needs more discussion, name a deadline and a decider — don't let it drift.
- Check public meetings against your 1:1s — if 1:1s show disagreement that didn't surface in the public meeting, you have a safety gap.
- Standardize update channels. Sponsors hear from one source; conflicting messages get resolved before they reach leadership.