Three Meetings and a Spreadsheet

It started, as these things always do, with a reasonable request.

"Can we get a quick alignment on the Q4 priorities?"

Quick alignment. Two words that have launched more organizational suffering than any restructuring memo ever written.

The first meeting was scheduled for thirty minutes. Eight people. It ran long because someone raised a question about resourcing. That question couldn't be answered without finance input. So a second meeting was scheduled.

The second meeting included finance. Finance wanted to see the priorities mapped against budget. Someone suggested a spreadsheet. Everyone agreed a spreadsheet would be helpful. A third meeting was scheduled to review the spreadsheet.

The third meeting was canceled twice, rescheduled, and eventually held three weeks after the original "quick alignment." By then, two of the Q4 priorities had already been overtaken by events.

The spreadsheet was never completed.

The Arithmetic

Three meetings. Twenty-two combined attendees across all three. Roughly fourteen hours of collective time. Plus the email threads, the Slack discussions, the draft spreadsheet that someone spent four hours building before the scope changed.

Total organizational cost: approximately $6,000 in salary time. Deliverable produced: nothing. Decisions made: zero.

But everyone felt busy. Everyone felt involved. Everyone had the comforting sense that process was happening -- that adults were in the room, aligning.

Alignment is the organizational equivalent of stretching before a run you never actually go on. It feels productive. It looks responsible. And it accomplishes nothing unless someone eventually starts moving.