Coordination Theater

There’s a version of coordination that looks productive but accomplishes nothing.

Everyone shows up to meetings. Updates get shared. Timelines reviewed. People nod. Then everyone leaves and does exactly what they were planning before the meeting.

Coordination theater.

It has all the cost of real coordination with none of the value. And it’s exhausting because it feels like work without producing results.

Real alignment doesn’t feel smooth. It feels like friction. It means surfacing where priorities actually conflict, naming what’s incompatible, and deciding together what breaks and what holds.

Most leaders avoid this because they think agreement is the goal. Agreement isn’t the goal. Clarity is.

Sometimes clarity means acknowledging that Agency A’s priority and Agency B’s priority can’t both win, and someone has to decide which matters more right now. That’s uncomfortable. But it’s honest.

Honest coordination moves things forward. Polite coordination just schedules more meetings.

The tell is simple: after your coordination meeting, do people change what they’re doing, or do they just update their slides?