Who Decides · Chapter Three

The Meeting That Could Not Close

A room with an owner and enough information can still fail to decide, for want of a rule for when it is finished.

Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306

Chapter Three of Who Decides: Where a Firm's Decisions Wait.

Abstract

A room with an owner and enough information can still fail to decide, for want of a rule for when it is finished. It is ten past six on a Thursday, and the executive team of a software company has been in the long room on the second floor since half past four. On the whiteboard, in four colours, are the options for the old scheduling product, written up in March: A, retire it at the end of the year; B, retire it next summer; C, keep it on maintenance only; D, sell the customer base to a partner. Under each is a list of points that has grown at every meeting. There are thirty customers still on the old product. Two engineers spend most of their week keeping it running. Everyone in the room has said, at one meeting or another, that A or B is the right answer.

Read the PDFRead the whole bookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989223

Cite this chapter

Santa Anna, A. (2026). The Meeting That Could Not Close. In Who Decides. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989223

@incollection{santaanna2026who3,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {The Meeting That Could Not Close},
  booktitle = {Who Decides},
  chapter   = {3},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989223},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/who-decides/03-the-meeting-that-could-not-close/}
}

References

  1. Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Making fast strategic decisions in high-velocity environments. Academy of Management Journal, 32(3), 543–576. https://doi.org/10.5465/256434
  2. Baum, J. R., & Wally, S. (2003). Strategic decision speed and firm performance. Strategic Management Journal, 24(11), 1107–1129. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.343
  3. Perlow, L. A., Okhuysen, G. A., & Repenning, N. P. (2002). The speed trap: Exploring the relationship between decision making and temporal context. Academy of Management Journal, 45(5), 931–955. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069323

Every chapter of Who Decides

  1. Chapter OneThe Decision Nobody Ownsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989217
  2. Chapter TwoThree Signatures for a Pumpdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989221
  3. Chapter ThreeThe Meeting That Could Not Closedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989223
  4. Chapter FourToo Far In to Stopdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989227
  5. Chapter FiveWhat a Late Yes Costsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989229
  6. Chapter SixThe First Ninety Daysdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989231
  7. Chapter SevenThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989235

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The licence

Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.