The one meeting that reveals coordination dysfunction

Before any diagnosis, before any deliverable, there is always one meeting with the same structure.

I ask two questions: who was not in the room when the last major product decision was made, and how did they find out about it?

The answers reveal almost everything I need to know.

Teams that work well together provide a confident and brief answer to the first question and a straightforward, calm answer to the second. Decisions are made by those with the right context, and information flows in a predictable way afterward.

Teams struggling with coordination offer one of three responses.

First, there’s a long pause followed by a list of people who should have been present but weren’t, usually the most experienced members of the team.

Second, there’s an awkward answer regarding how the affected people learned about the decision, usually late and often through their workload rather than a discussion.

Third, there’s genuine uncertainty about whether the right people were even involved, meaning the decision-making process is unclear even to those within it.

I have attended enough of these meetings to recognize the patterns before the response finishes.

This is important because issues with coordination are often invisible in daily activities. Teams are completing tasks, standups are occurring, and the product is advancing. However, the quality of what is created suffers because decisions are made without a complete understanding, and this cost does not appear in any budget.

It shows up in delivery delays, rework cycles, and features built to incorrect specifications. Experienced members become progressively disengaged because their insights are not included.

That one meeting tells me where to focus my attention. Everything else in the engagement is aimed at identifying exactly what is broken and establishing the coordination structure needed to fix it.

If you see your team reflected in any of those three responses, that’s where the diagnostic begins.

Take the First Crack assessment, it takes less than 5 minutes and pinpoints where the issues started.