The hurried yes

There is a kind of agreement that exists only to let everyone stand up. It sounds like progress. It is entered in the notes. It commits the firm to a course that no one has quite chosen, because choosing would have taken another hour, and the hour was not on offer.

The cost does not appear as a line. It appears later, as attention. A yes given in passing occupies the same people who will be needed when a real decision arrives. It signals, internally, that this is now a priority. Unwinding it requires someone to look changeable. Most people would rather execute a mediocre instruction than reopen it.

The calendar is a poor proxy for importance. A date can be real — a signing, a departure, a financing that will not wait — and still not be a reason to skip the question underneath. What does this commit us to after the announcement has faded? What do we become unavailable for if we proceed? Who will have to live with the second-order effects, and have they been in the room?

None of these questions is elaborate. They are simply difficult to ask when the temperature of a meeting is towards closure. That is usually when they are worth asking.

A practice like ours is occasionally invited in to supply pace. We are more useful when we are invited to supply a pause that the organisation cannot quite give itself. Not delay for its own sake. A pause with a purpose: to let a yes mean what it will later be taken to have meant.