Question 08 · Repair & Reuse · Two-hub launch
Meeting cadence
The question: What balance of meetings and asynchronous updates keeps the team aligned at an acceptable time cost?
Start with a daily written update and two 15-minute alignment meetings each week. Bring a decision owner and the affected people together immediately when safety or a time-critical dependency cannot wait. For eight participants, the starting scenario costs 7 hours 40 minutes of collective attention per week, including one four-person exception huddle.
This fits the assumed eight-hour weekly attention budget with only 20 minutes to spare. Trial it for one week: the fixtures contain no evidence that this cadence is sufficient, so judge it by missed decisions and blocked work as well as time spent.
1. Set the attention budget
Count person-minutes, not calendar minutes: a 15-minute meeting with eight people uses two collective hours. Each protocol keeps the same written update and scan, including on meeting days, so the decision trail survives.
Fixture default: six launch staff plus two supplier/governance representatives. The model assumes all eight post and scan on five working days. Writing = 3 minutes and meeting = 15 minutes are supplied; reading = 1 minute, exception load and the attention budget are authored assumptions. Changes above are scenario overrides.
Bars share the same scale. Huddle frequency is held equal across protocols for a fair cost comparison; no causal effect of meetings on exceptions is assumed. Zero forecast huddles does not remove the escalation rule.
2. Inspect the operating agreement
Every working day
- By 09:15: each owner posts what changed, next commitment, blocker, decision needed, owner and latest safe decision time in one shared thread or board.
- By 09:30: participants scan relevant updates; named decision owners acknowledge or redirect requests within one working hour. Reading allowance is an estimate, not proof of comprehension.
- After a decision: its owner writes the outcome, authority, affected commitments and next check in the same thread. An update without a named owner is incomplete.
Use synchronous time for decisions
Invite the people who can resolve the issue and those whose work changes. Others receive the written outcome. A routine meeting does not confer purchase, budget or safety approval.
09:15 / 09:30, one-hour acknowledgement, the agenda and meeting days are proposed operating rules, not supplied observations.
Correct the highlighted inputs to inspect a current protocol. The prior comparison is hidden to avoid showing stale figures.
3. Test when waiting becomes unsafe or costly
Asynchronous-first still needs immediate contact for exceptions. This simulator applies the proposed rules; it does not notify anyone, call a meeting, stop equipment or authorise work.
No route simulated yet
Choose a situation and simulate to see who should align, when, and what outcome must be recorded.
No external action. Change the inputs and simulate again to correct this result, or Reset to clear it.
Explicit trigger rules and precedence
- Safety / unmet readiness gate: contact the accountable safety or readiness owner immediately; hold affected work or release under the relevant procedure. A huddle cannot waive a gate.
- A blocker, conflict or unreliable status with ≤4 working hours to a decision: an immediate short alignment huddle with the owner and affected staff. If the deadline is ≤1 hour or already passed, reach the owner now and agree a safe hold or replan; a meeting invitation is insufficient.
- An unacknowledged decision request: directly contact the owner now. If cross-hub work is blocked, align the affected people immediately. Do not wait for the next scheduled meeting.
- Authority exceeded: route to the accountable decision maker. Urgent timing above takes precedence; otherwise request an acknowledgement within one working hour and preserve the existing approved position.
- A non-urgent issue: use one decision thread with a named owner, options, latest decision time and a one-working-hour acknowledgement target. Use the next scheduled meeting only if it precedes the safe decision time.
- Routine progress: use the next daily update and scan. A claimed urgent deadline without an actual decision is a reason to clarify the request, not automatically convene everyone.
The four-hour boundary is an adjustable organisational judgement, held fixed here to keep the model inspectable. It has not been validated against either hub.
Evidence, limits and the first-week decision
Keep the balanced protocol if cross-hub dependencies are understood, decisions arrive before their safe deadline, and observed attention stays affordable. Trial asynchronous-first only after the shared record, named ownership and acknowledgement habit work reliably. Restore more live coordination if decisions are missed, contradictions persist or blocked time grows. Daily meeting-assisted is a temporary option during tightly coupled fit-out, integration or readiness; its higher cost does not itself demonstrate better alignment.
| Basis | Record / rule | Implication |
|---|---|---|
| Benchmark 1.0.0 · coordination | 5 working days; 15-minute meetings; 3-minute routine update per person per day; default six staff plus two representatives. | Supplied synthetic inputs. “Update” does not specify reading time: interpreted here as writing, with reading shown separately. |
| Case context | Two hubs, shared equipment and suppliers; 12-week launch, £240,000 budget and six cross-trained staff. | Cross-hub dependencies justify an explicit exception route. No monetary meeting cost is claimed: representatives' rates and working patterns are unknown. |
| Authored design assumptions | Daily / twice-weekly / no routine meeting; 1-minute daily scan; one four-person huddle; 8 collective hours per week; acknowledgement and escalation rules. | Editable cost assumptions are scenarios, not empirical estimates of attendance or effectiveness. |
| Missing evidence | Actual blocked hours, response latency, missed decisions, meeting preparation, interruption/recovery cost and update quality. | Total attention is a lower-bound planning estimate. Track actual minutes and decision outcomes in the first week; no measured improvement is asserted. |
First-week check: compare actual collective minutes with the budget; count decision requests acknowledged within one working hour; inspect late decisions, blocked cross-hub hours and any safety escalation delay. Inspect causes before changing frequency. Safety escalation is required regardless of the attention budget.
Calculation and acceptance checks
Starting scenario: written updates and reading = 8 × 5 × (3 + 1) = 160 person-minutes; each all-participant meeting = 8 × 15 = 120; one exception = 4 × 15 = 60. Therefore daily = 820 minutes, balanced = 460, asynchronous-first = 220. At unchanged weekly load, 12-week totals are 164, 92 and 44 collective hours. The balanced estimate is 360 minutes below daily meeting-assisted; that is arithmetic from assumptions, not observed productivity improvement.
This page compares meeting-assisted and asynchronous protocols, separates scheduled and exception costs, shows a weekly operating agreement, and routes immediate-alignment triggers. Local arithmetic, input validation and interaction checks are documented in the private author receipt. Browser review belongs to the run's separate review stage.