The Meeting That Broke the Agenda (Vol. 1, Issue 5)

Excerpt:

This week’s dispatch recounts a meeting in Deliveria that wandered off the agenda, off the map, and possibly off reality. A short tale about misalignment, derailment, and the moment a PM realizes they’re the only one still in the actual meeting.

Full Issue

In Deliveria, meetings fall into two categories:

1. The meeting you planned.

2. The meeting everyone else attends.

Today’s dispatch is about the second kind.

A Tale From the Trench

The agenda was perfect.

Five bullet points. Forty minutes. All the right people invited. The room actually booked in advance (a miracle).

I even printed handouts — a decision I immediately regretted because the handouts made me look hopeful. In Deliveria, hope is a dangerous scent. It attracts trouble.

The meeting began with the usual pleasantries. Then someone said the words:

“Before we start, quick question…”

Quick question. The death omen of every agenda.

This one question triggered another question, which triggered a clarification, which triggered a disagreement, which triggered a philosophical debate about what “done” means.

Ten minutes in, we were no longer on Topic #1. We were on Topic #0 — The Topic That Precedes All Topics.

Fifteen minutes in, someone brought up another project entirely.

A project I’m not even assigned to.

Twenty minutes in, someone asked:

“Wait… why are we here again?”

A question I, the PM, should never have to hear. Especially not from the sponsor.

When a Meeting Becomes a Creature

At some point, the meeting developed a life of its own.

Not a smart life. Not an organized life. More like a confused blob rolling downhill.

A living, breathing derailment.

Every time I tried to guide us back to the agenda, someone said:

“Right, right, but just one more thing…”

The meeting didn’t end. It simply concluded itself and wandered away — like a stray cat that decides it’s done with you.

We all left the room exhausted, confused, and somehow with more action items than we came in with.

The only bullet point we actually completed was the first line on the agenda:“Welcome.”

And even that had gone sideways.

Field Note #5: The Meeting Isn’t the Problem

Here’s what I learned:

Meetings only go off the rails when the alignment beneath them is already broken.

A wandering meeting is a symptom of a wandering project.

If the team can't stay inside the conversation, it’s because they aren’t inside the same understanding anymore.

The meeting simply reveals the misalignment that’s been accumulating silently:

• shifting assumptions

• unclear decisions

• unspoken disagreements

• competing interpretations of the plan

• people carrying different versions of the project in their heads

You don’t fix this with better agendas. You fix it by realigning expectations outside the room.

The meeting is where the chaos shows up —not where it starts.

A PMTales Insight

If you ever find yourself in a meeting that has spiraled so far off-course you no longer recognize the agenda… pause and ask:

“What are we actually trying to solve right now?”

It’s a reset button.

It pulls people out of the side-quests. It forces clarity. It exposes the real dialogue beneath the noise.

Half the time, you’ll discover the meeting was never about the agenda at all.

It was about the thing nobody wanted to name.

Until Next Week

May your meetings stay on track. Or at least within the same solar system.

See you in the trench,

D.B. Trench

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