They were there around the table, the CEO, two VPs, finance, legal, and someone external whose presence had never really been explained but was always tolerated.
The meeting was supposed to be short, forty-five minutes, an alignment, a mandatory step, and it had started with constraints, with context, with that elegant way of talking about everything except what actually blocks things.
Then the question came up, almost trivial, asked without emphasis, noted as just another operational detail:
– who decides, concretely, when two VPs disagree?
No one answered. Silence. Not dramatic. No visible tension. Just that administrative drift where everyone assumes the answer exists somewhere, but not here, not now.
There was talk of processes, committees, cross-validations. Then someone reformulated, without raising their voice:
– so, no one.
This time, no one corrected it.
The sentence stayed there. Visible. Hard to move. And everyone knew that if it stayed, someone would eventually have to lose something.
The meeting ended ten minutes earlier than planned. The point was not recorded in the minutes.
The next meeting started on time.
