The meeting that eventually made itself unnecessary.

Context

This anonymized case concerns a startup.

Visible problem

Customer orders were repeatedly late, while employees only appeared to have spare capacity.

Signal

In the first meeting, teams waited to discuss cross-functional problems. When dependencies surfaced, departments defended their own positions until the CEO intervened, and managers struggled to communicate actual work status without long, unfocused explanations.

Diagnosis

The issue was not simply productivity. Everyone was locally accountable, but no one was collectively accountable for delivery.

Design

Before the second meeting, four operating rules were introduced: each department head had 10 minutes; reports covered only what had been done, where the department was blocked, and what resource or coordination was needed and from whom; a requested department had to propose a response; and teams were expected to communicate before the meeting when an issue was too complex to resolve there.

Implementation

The biweekly meeting and its four operating rules were implemented. The structure initially required enforcement.

Validation

By the fourth meeting, departments receiving coordination requests were no longer primarily explaining why something was not their responsibility; they were mobilizing resources and proposing solutions.

Institutionalization

The meeting was reduced to monthly, not eliminated; coordination remained important as teams learned to coordinate before the meeting.