Oh no. It happened. Again.
Your team planned the next two weeks perfectly. Every task, every handoff, neatly mapped. Crystal clear.
And then it goes sideways. Another team has a question. Suddenly you’re helping—now—and it’s not just you; it’s your team. One DM offers a hint. Another DM drops a fragment. The rest is a scattershot of decisions (past and pending) smeared across three long threads and a timezone-tortured Zoom. Naturally it was on “no-meeting Wednesday,” no one hit record, the AI summarizer never started, and nobody took notes. (Crap!)
Mess
It’s not just you feeling it. Everyone feels the mess. You know because, sooner or later, someone says something like:
“We all have to get better at communication. We have to synergize our workstreams to maximize our efforts to ensure that we deliver on time without compromising quality…”
(And then, the kicker…)
“We all have to get on the same page.”
There it is. The phrase. The moment where everyone silently admits the chaos has spilled too far. The “we can’t even make sense of anything anymore” moment.
Schedule
First step? Schedule a meeting. Yes, I know — the dreaded calendar Tetris. But nothing clears fog like real-time alignment.
So someone (probably you) has to step up, scan the calendars, and wrangle the timezone math until the best(ish) slot appears. Not perfect, just survivable.
And here’s the trick: don’t schedule it immediately. Give people time to prepare. Ideally the next day, or at least an hour or two out. Any sooner, and half the team will wander in unprepared, still chewing on lunch, already behind.
Think of it less like “another meeting” and more like an emergency pit stop: a short pause to fix the wheels before the car falls apart on the track (and explodes).
Prep
Now that the slot’s on the books, make the prep count.
Spin up a shared, editable doc. Start by dumping everything you’re confused about into a list. Don’t overthink — just capture it. Once you’ve got a pile, sort it a bit. If there’s enough, group them into sections. Even loose categories help turn chaos into patterns.
Post the doc link in a public channel, alongside the meeting invite, and tell people to pre-read. Stress that part. Pre-read. Please (Reality check: not everyone will)
Bonus move: ask folks to add their questions directly into the doc, under the sections you created. As plain text, not comments. Comments vanish. Text lives. You want these questions visible and impossible to miss.
Before the meeting, circle back to the doc. Shuffle things if needed. Maybe add a new section. Then — one more reminder ping. “Hey team, don’t forget to read this before we meet.” (And yes, again, not everyone will. But at least you tried.)
Clear
The meeting begins. Screen share on. The doc is open — and only the doc. No Slack lurking in the background, no inbox tab flashing red. Just the page.
This is the moment. The actual “same page” moment. Everyone’s eyes on the same words, the same questions, the same mess you’re here to untangle.
Your job? Clear as much of it as you can before the clock runs out. Picture it like a quest in an RPG where each resolved item is loot, or if you prefer higher drama, like a bomb-timer thriller — red digits counting down as you scramble to disarm. Dealer’s choice.
(Time’s ticking. Go.)
Before diving in, set the ground rules:
- You’re driving the meeting.
- You’ll run through the questions/concerns in order.
- You’re taking live notes (others can and should jump in too).
- You’ll cut off tangents before they spiral — those can live on Slack later, not here.
- Everyone needs to pay attention.
- No “vibe coding” or sneaky side projects. That’s how you ended up needing a meeting like this in the first place.
Once the rules are clear, dive straight in.
“First question…”
Clarify
“First question: Not sure if the UX experience will be negatively impacted if we go with a sub-optimal solution due to the scope and capabilities that are currently being constrained by the tech debt of (other feature’s name).”
Pause. Breathe. Get ready to dive into that corporate soup. Everyone’s pretending to follow along, nodding in their little Zoom squares, but half of them are lost. And nobody wants to be the one to say, “Wait… what?”
This is where you step in. Translate.
“In other words: you’re asking if the UX will feel bad because there’s only so much we can code, right?”
Then — call someone by name. The best person to answer.
“…Ali?”
If they nod, great. If they don’t, keep peeling it back until the question is clear enough to explain to a 5-year-old.
Now that the soup’s thinned out, assign the next move:
“Sam — can you spend an hour after this call testing it out? Give us a couple options. Record a Loom so everyone can see. Share it in the main channel. Sound good?”
Let’s breakdown that seemingly simple but very intentional request:
- “Sam” → Names cut through noise. If they weren’t paying attention before, they are now.
- “One hour, give us options” → Clear objective + clear timebox. No ambiguity.
- “Record a Loom” → Lowers every barrier. No “how do I run this locally” excuses. Everyone sees the same thing.
- “Post it in the main channel” → No more siloed DMs that balloon into chaos. This is how you stop history from repeating itself.
Rinse and repeat. Every question. Every time.
Capture
As folks are talking, capture. In the doc. Live. Where everyone can see it.
This is mandatory.
Yes, AI note-takers are nice. Yes, a tidy summary showing up in your inbox later is cool. But it’s not the same. It’s not alignment.
Because live words on the page do two things:
- Focus. Seeing their thoughts written down forces people to engage. If the words don’t match what they meant, they’ll jump in and fix it. Misunderstandings get corrected on the spot instead of festering for days.
- Context. Notes link conversations together. A question leads to an answer, leads to a link, leads to a decision. The flow lives right there in the doc.
As you go, capture the extras too — links, screenshots, videos from demos. Don’t let them vanish into Slack threads or someone’s Downloads folder. Collect them while the context is fresh.
Think of the doc like a shared whiteboard in the middle of the room. Every stroke matters. Every scribble is a breadcrumb. If you don’t write it down, it’s gone.
Always be capturing. Do it live. Do it together. That’s how a mess turns into a map.
Summarize
Time’s up. You didn’t get through every single bullet — and that’s okay. Because you accomplished something bigger:
Alignment.
Before the meeting ends, you need to lock it in. Out loud. Clearly. No vague hand-waving.
It should sound like this...
---
Thanks everyone!
Today, we covered:
- Improving the UX experience of the checkout flow
- Stabilizing the payment system
- Creating additional entry points to checkout
- Making the shared code libraries easier to use between teams
And here’s who’s doing what next:
- Sam: Prototype the checkout flow. Timebox it. Record a Loom and share it in channel.
- Ali: Review Sam’s prototype. Add details needed for the build.
- Arden: Focus on the payment system issue. Report back by end of day.
- Mav: Partner with Ali to explore additional entry points.
- Riley: Audit the shared libraries. Make a list of what can be generalized.
Everyone clear? Any questions? Seriously. Any at all?
(Look for head nods, smiles, and thumbs ups. These will feel stronger vs. the ones you may have seen earlier.)
Good!
I know we didn't get to everything, but we have it documented, and we'll focus on what we can do for now.
I’ll summarize all this info, and share it and the meeting doc on Slack after this call.
Thanks everyone.
Best of luck.
---
Watches...
Yes — it’s absolutely that cinematic “synchronize watches” moment a SWAT team has before breaching the building. Everyone tense. Everyone aligned. Everyone clear.
And honestly? That’s exactly what the team needed.
I run this kind of reset all the time. It’s not glamorous. It’s not fancy. But it works.
Because in the middle of chaos, people don’t need more noise. They need:
- Crystal clarity.
- Real connection.
- A sliver of hope that we can still (maybe) land the plane.
That shift — from scattered heads, messy hands, and interweaving DM threads to one doc, one page, one voice — changes everything.
All because someone stopped, and decided:
We’re getting on the same page.