“Okay. So when he asks about the Q1 timeline, we all agree. We say it’s on track. We say the integration is solid. No one, and I mean no one, mentions the server migration issue.”

The air in the focus room is thick and stale, tasting of lukewarm coffee and low-grade anxiety. There are four of us, huddled around a table designed for two, our knees practically touching. This isn’t a meeting. It’s a conspiracy. A dress rehearsal for a piece of corporate theater we’ll be performing in 41 minutes for an audience of one: David.

For years, I despised this ritual. The meeting before the meeting. It felt like a betrayal of some core principle I thought we were all supposed to believe in. The principle of open debate, of intellectual honesty. The idea that the best arguments should win, out in the open, on a field of merit. But that’s not how it works. That belief is a glass door you don’t see until you’ve walked right into it, the impact leaving a dull ache in your forehead and a profound sense of your own foolishness. I should know.

Crafting the Corporate Narrative

We’re not aligning on a strategy; we’re aligning on a story. We’re trimming the fat, sanding down the sharp edges, and hiding the inconvenient truths that would require David to do something difficult, like think or make a decision with incomplete information. The actual meeting, the one on the calendar for 11:00 AM, is merely the stage where we recite the lines we’ve all agreed upon here, in this suffocating little room. It’s a performance for the person with the formal authority but none of the actual, on-the-ground influence.

Her job is to tidy up the performance, not to document the truth. In her line of work, that’s an acceptable service. In ours, it’s a cultural disease.

We create a corporate transcript. We edit out the nuance, the dissent, the healthy, vital friction that produces good work. The official meeting minutes will show a project that is ‘green.’ They will not show the four of us in this room, negotiating a shared fiction.

The Purist’s Reckoning

I used to be a purist about this. I’d argue that this secrecy, this back-channel alignment, was the root of all dysfunction. I’d say, “If we can’t say it in front of David, we shouldn’t be doing it at all.” That was before I walked into my own version of that glass door. I presented an idea, raw and honest, in a senior leadership meeting. I hadn’t pre-sold it. I hadn’t done the tour of offices, getting the secret handshakes and nods of approval. I believed the idea was strong enough to stand on its own. It was a beautiful idea, one that would have saved the department $171,001 in its first year. I was proud of it.

And I watched it get dismantled in under 11 minutes. Not because it was a bad idea, but because it was an unfamiliar one. It surprised people, and powerful people do not like to be surprised. I hadn’t managed their feelings beforehand. I hadn’t given them a story they could comfortably adopt as their own. I presented a solution; they saw a threat. I failed to realize the meeting wasn’t about the work. It was about reinforcing the existing power structure. My honest, transparent idea was a crack in the foundation, and it was swiftly plastered over.

Strategic Adaptation & Curated Truth

The pre-meeting isn’t a failure of courage. It’s a strategic adaptation to a hostile environment. It’s a survival mechanism. You don’t have pre-meetings in cultures built on psychological safety and trust. You have them in cultures built on fear and ego. When the person in charge is volatile, or insecure, or simply doesn’t have the mental bandwidth to process complexity, you cannot have a real meeting. You must, instead, protect your work, your team, and your sanity by doing the real work in the shadows.

You are translating a complex, messy reality into a simple, palatable story that the monarch can understand. This isn’t about lying. It’s about curating the truth. It’s about deciding which parts of the story are productive to tell and which will only create chaos. It’s an act of collective self-preservation. Nora was just telling me about a project she was transcribing, a deep dive into agricultural science, where the entire premise is the exact opposite. The speakers were discussing how modern growers require absolute, unvarnished data. They need to know the precise genetic lineage, the exact chemical stability, the potential yield down to a single gram-no storytelling, just pure information. Success in that field depends on total transparency, on things like knowing the exact profile of the feminized cannabis seeds you’re working with. There, curation is malpractice. In our world, it’s the only way to get anything done.

That’s a tangent, I know. But the contrast is what matters. In some systems, clarity is paramount. In others, it’s a liability. We have built ourselves a system where clarity is a liability.

The Reluctant Strategist

So I find myself contradicting my own deeply held beliefs. I now organize these pre-meetings. I facilitate them. I sit here and help craft the narrative. I hate that I do it. I hate the culture that makes it necessary. I hate that we have to treat our leaders like medieval kings who might execute the messenger if the news is displeasing. I resent spending 21% of my work week managing up, translating, and preparing the performance instead of just doing the work.

But I do it. Because the last time I didn’t, my project died, and my team’s morale was gutted for a month. I mistook a clear pane of glass for an open door and the impact taught me a lesson my idealism refused to. The pre-meeting isn’t a sign that your team is broken. It’s a sign that your leadership is. It’s a perfectly rational response to an irrational system. We aren’t being deceptive. We are being strategic. We are protecting progress from power.

And so, back in this tiny, airless room, I nod. “Q1 is on track. The integration is solid. Server migration issue stays with us until we have a solution.” The conspiracy is set. The script is memorized. The curtain rises in 21 minutes. We are ready for the show.