Bring reality into the room

Purpose · Little Light original

The meeting is redesigning a process used every day by people who are not in the room. The slides are thorough, the intentions are good, and every opinion comes from someone at least two steps removed from the actual work. A summary of frontline feedback appears near the end, after the important choices have already begun to harden. Invite someone close to the work before the solution takes shape. Give them the context, time, and standing to challenge an assumption rather than asking for a quick reaction to a nearly finished plan. One person cannot represent every colleague or customer, but their lived knowledge can reveal friction that a dashboard smooths away. Credit that contribution when the plan improves. Expertise does not always sit at the highest level of an organisation. Often it lives beside the recurring problem. Bringing that knowledge into the room early is not a courtesy. It is how thoughtful leaders keep promising ideas connected to the reality they are meant to serve.

Little Light