Coordinate and act
Walk the Roots
Talk to each person before the meeting
Talk to each affected person one-on-one before you raise a proposal, so the meeting confirms an agreement instead of starting a fight.
Borrowed from Nemawashi, the Japanese practice of talking with each affected person before a proposal is formally made. Read the original source.
One session · Days or ongoing effort · Anyone on the team can start it
Try this first
Talk to each key person one-on-one before you raise it formally, and hear what they say.
Use it when
A big AI-driven change is about to hit the room and quiet dissenters exist.
Skip it when
It takes time, so use it on significant proposals with people to bring along. If you have no intention of changing the plan, this is not consultation, it is pre-selling, and people can tell.
How to introduce it
Before you put a big proposal in front of a room, talk to each person it affects, one at a time. Hear the objections. Fix what you can. By the time it reaches the meeting, nobody is surprised and nobody has to fight you in public.
How to show up
Coach the owner to listen and adjust rather than pre-sell a finished plan. Reticent dissenters should be heard in private, not ambushed in the meeting.
How long it takes
Days of one-on-one conversations ahead of a big proposal. Smoother meetings and implementation after.
What makes it hard
It feels slower than presenting once to everyone, and it prevents a costlier public fight. Run as pre-selling it backfires, so the owner has to be willing to change the proposal.
What it looks like when it's working
Objections come up and get handled before the meeting, and the decision goes through without a brawl. Meetings still erupting with surprise objections mean the groundwork did not happen.
How long until it sticks
A few proposals before the team values building support in advance over presenting cold.
How you know it stuck
Significant proposals get walked past the affected people first as a matter of course.
The idea behind it
A proposal sprung on a room invites resistance. The same proposal, talked through first, invites support. The private conversations are where the agreement gets built.
Where it comes from
The Japanese practice of nemawashi. A big AI-driven change lands on people differently. Private conversations surface the quiet dissent that would otherwise show up as slow implementation. Before a proposal reaches the room, its owner talks to each affected person one at a time, collects the objections, and adjusts. The meeting then confirms something instead of starting a fight.
Why it matters for senior teams
It shapes direction and consequential decisions