Published cartoon ·
Did you get alignment from everyone on this?
Consensus becomes an endurance event.
Why this one bites
The employee enters a circuit of meetings while the manager waits beyond a finish line. Asking whether everyone agreed provides a reason to repeat the consultation without identifying a specific objection that could be resolved.
The caption makes exhaustion part of the strategy. The proposal is not rejected outright; it is sent around again until its advocate gives up. The winner is the person who can wait outside the loop longest, rather than the person with the strongest case.
Accessible summary
- A worried employee approaches four meeting tables connected by circular arrows. A satisfied figure waits behind a chequered finish line.
- The caption describes scheduling more alignment meetings until the employee abandons an unwanted proposal.
Reading notes
Everyone is an exceptionally convenient approval boundary because it can always include one more person. A proposal may satisfy its original reviewers and still be returned because a newly interested stakeholder was not consulted. The apparent standard is comprehensive agreement; the practical result is a decision that never becomes safe to make. The proposer cannot know they have finished because the membership of the audience keeps changing.
Consultation, approval and notification are different jobs. Someone may need to understand a change without having the authority to veto it. Another person may control a resource that makes their approval essential. Treating both as identical stakeholders turns an information-sharing exercise into an unlimited permission system. The quietest or least available participant can then determine the pace of everybody else's work.
The alternative is not to ignore affected people. It is to make the decision process explicit before the rounds begin: who decides, who advises, whose consent is required and how unresolved disagreement will be recorded. That gives objections a meaningful place without pretending unanimity is always possible. The satire targets the retrospective demand for universal agreement, especially when the person demanding it retains the option to disagree after everybody else has finally said yes.