Alignment-vs-Informational-Meetings

What It Is

The Alignment vs. Informational meeting distinction, articulated by Michael Lopp in Managing Humans - Lopp - 2019 (Chapter 4), holds that every meeting falls into exactly one of two categories — and that running a meeting without knowing which type it is guarantees poor outcomes.

• Informational meetings: Convey status, data, or decisions already made. No decisions are required from participants. The goal is shared understanding and context transfer.
• Alignment meetings: Exist to surface disagreement, weigh options, and arrive at a collective decision. Require participants with both perspective and decision-making authority. The goal is resolution and commitment.

This distinction has support in academic meeting science. Allen et al. (2014) proposed a taxonomy of meeting purposes that identifies information-sharing and problem-solving/decision-making as the two most prevalent categories in workplace meetings — mapping directly onto Lopp’s framework.

The Core Failure Mode

The most damaging meeting pathology is treating an alignment meeting as informational — presenting a decision as though it has already been made, while the room contains people who expected to make it. The consequences:

• Surface agreement, hidden resistance — participants nod but do not genuinely commit
• Post-meeting lobbying — real decisions migrate to corridor conversations
• Damaged trust — participants feel their input was theatre, not substance
• Wasted time — the meeting neither informed nor aligned anyone

Lopp argues this failure is so common because managers default to presentation mode regardless of meeting purpose.

Identifying Meeting Type in Advance

Before scheduling or accepting a meeting, determine:

1. Is a decision required by the end? → Alignment
2. Is information asymmetric (one party knows; others need to learn)? → Informational
3. Are there stakeholders with competing views who need to weigh in? → Alignment
4. Is the outcome already determined and the communication one-directional? → Informational (or no meeting needed)

Practical Heuristics

• State the meeting type in the invitation: e.g., “This is a decision meeting. We need to resolve X by end of session.” Removes ambiguity about participant expectations and authority.
• Calibrate room composition: Informational meetings tolerate large, passive audiences. Alignment meetings should be small, restricted to actual decision-makers.
• Pre-distribute context for alignment meetings: Amazon’s six-page narrative memo practice (introduced by Jeff Bezos in 2004) operationalises this: participants read a structured document in silence at the meeting’s start, so the meeting itself is pure deliberation — no context transfer mixed with decision-making.
• Surface conflict deliberately: Lencioni (2004) argues that effective decision meetings require constructive ideological conflict. Meetings that feel comfortable rarely produce durable alignment because disagreement has been suppressed rather than resolved.

Future Connections

Related atomic notes planned for creation: 1on1-Meeting-Formats, DNA-Meeting

Related Concepts

• Managing Humans - Lopp - 2019
• Manager-as-Communication-Hub
• Three-Managerial-Superpowers
• 1on1-Meeting-Formats
• DNA-Meeting

Sources

• Lopp, Michael (2019). Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager. 3rd ed. Apress. ISBN: 978-1-484-23712-4. Available: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-3713-1

  • Chapter 4: “How to Run a Meeting” — primary source for the alignment vs. informational distinction and the failure modes of conflating them

• Allen, Joseph A., Beck, Tammy, Scott, Cliff W., and Rogelberg, Steven G. (2014). “Understanding workplace meetings: A qualitative taxonomy of meeting purposes.” Management Research Review, Vol. 37, No. 9, pp. 791–814. DOI: 10.1108/MRR-03-2013-0067. Available: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/MRR-03-2013-0067/full/html

  • Academic taxonomy of meeting purposes; identifies information-sharing and decision-making as the two most frequent categories in workplace meetings, corroborating Lopp’s binary framework

• Lencioni, Patrick M. (2004). Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business. Jossey-Bass. ISBN: 978-0-787-96805-5. Available: https://www.tablegroup.com/product/dbm/

  • Proposes four distinct meeting types; argues that effective alignment meetings require structured ideological conflict — passive meetings produce false consensus rather than genuine commitment

• Bariso, Justin (2019). “Jeff Bezos Knows How to Run a Meeting. Here’s How He Does It.” Inc. Available: https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/jeff-bezos-knows-how-to-run-a-meeting-here-are-his-three-simple-rules.html

  • Describes Amazon’s six-page memo practice as a mechanism for pre-loading context so decision meetings contain only deliberation, not information transfer — a practical operationalisation of the informational/alignment split

• Schwarz, Roger M. (2013). Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck to Get Results. Jossey-Bass. ISBN: 978-0-787-98873-9. Available: https://schwarzassociates.com/the-book-smart-leaders-smarter-teams/

  • Mutual Learning framework for team decision-making; emphasises that unambiguous meeting purpose and transparent intent are prerequisites for genuine alignment rather than compliance

Note

This content was drafted with assistance from AI tools for research, organization, and initial content generation. All final content has been reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the author to ensure accuracy and alignment with the author’s intentions and perspective.