Alignment, governance, and risk meetings, each defensible on its own, fill a rival's calendar until no time is left to deliver the agenda they were hired for.
An example
Six months into the job, the new head of digital manufacturing at an aerospace parts supplier had a plan to put sensors on forty machining centers by year end. By March her calendar showed twenty-six recurring meetings a week: steering committees, architecture reviews, a weekly risk forum, three cross-plant alignment calls, and a monthly governance board. Most had been set up by the plant operations group and two directors close to the vice president of operations, who had argued for a different vendor. Each had a reasonable purpose, and attendance was described as mandatory. Her pilot on the first ten machines slipped from April to August. In the quarterly business review, the vice president noted that digital manufacturing had yet to show results and suggested folding it into operations.
Why it works
Every meeting draws down the rival's hours and attention, which makes pursuing their agenda costlier week by week. As deadlines slip, the agenda itself starts to look less promising, because an initiative that never ships looks worse than one that does. Deniability comes from each meeting being legitimate on its face; the pattern exists only in the calendar as a whole. It needs scheduling authority or allies who convene, strong norms of mandatory attendance, and a rival whose work requires long blocks of focus. It builds nothing for the actor, which is why incumbents defending against a challenger use it most.
The thinking behind it
Herbert A. Simon In Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World (1971), Simon argues that information consumes the attention of its recipients, so attention becomes the scarce resource. A calendar filled with alignment and review sessions spends the one resource a rival needs to deliver a demanding plan. Each meeting looks legitimate on its own, and the cost shows only in the total hours, which is why tagging a month of meetings by convener and outcome is the first defense.
Warning signs
Recurring alignment, review, and governance sessions fill a rival's calendar week after week, convened by the same small group of people. Most require that person's attendance, and few produce decisions. The conveners are allied with someone who opposed the plan. Delivery dates slip while the meetings continue, and the slippage is then cited as a reason to doubt the plan.
How to defend yourself
Count first. Tag a month of meetings by who convened them, what they decided, and whether your presence was needed, and total the hours. Then:
- delegate attendance wherever a meeting needs information more than authority
- ask your executive sponsor for calendar protection, such as fixed focus days or exemptions from named forums
- propose merging overlapping meetings, each with a written agenda and decision log
- decline individual meetings with a written reason, so each refusal is defensible
Show your sponsor the totals next to your slipped dates, before the slippage is used against you.
How a leader shuts it down
Make no-meeting days and written updates the default, and require every recurring meeting to have an owner, an agenda, and a decision log. Review the calendars of people leading critical initiatives and protect their time. When an initiative slips, ask how its leader's week was spent before judging the leader.