The Meeting Held to Confirm a Decision
Consensus is often achieved before the meeting, in pairwise conversations that no one documents. The meeting then ratifies what has already been settled, and participants who were absent from those conversations arrive to find the outcome predetermined.
The format wastes the attendees' time and, more damagingly, teaches them that attendance does not confer influence. Those who understand this invest their energy in the pre-meetings and treat the formal session as theater. The formal session, deprived of real deliberation, produces weaker decisions.
Converting ratification into deliberation requires surfacing the pre-meeting state. For those designing decision forums, transparency about what remains open is fundamental to effective professional development strategies. Our decision framework addresses pre-alignment.

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