From the book · Collapse or Collapse
No meetings: how agent-run outcomes work
Most meetings in a departmental company move information across a gap: who has done what, what is stuck, who decides. In Collapse or Collapse, a chain of agents carries the result end to end, so the gaps the meetings served are gone.
Status is always visible
Every agent reports its own flow, so nothing stalls unseen. In the master’s control room each vector is a tile: pale is flowing, amber is a warning, red needs a human now, and the red tiles move nearest her.
Decisions sit at gates
There is no approval that is not a signature, and no decision that does not sit at a gate. Reversible gates open on their own after the period the playbook sets; irreversible ones wait for the named human. Nothing needs a committee.
One face at a time
The aligner works from her cockpit and speaks to one agent, the quartermaster, which answers for the whole vector. She can call a meeting of the agents, but the book’s rule is one face at a time, and the meeting is the exception.
What stays human
The few conversations where a human changes the result: a signature, an appeal to the master, a judgement no gate was built for. The book argues they get better because they are rare.
Read more in the book
Questions this page answers
Can a company run without meetings?
Collapse or Collapse argues that status and coordination meetings disappear when a chain of agents carries each result end to end, because the status is always visible and decisions sit at named gates.
How do people know what is happening without status meetings?
Every agent reports its own flow. Each vector shows as a tile coloured by state, so the human sees at once what is flowing and what needs her.
Who makes decisions in an agent-run company?
The human whose name is on the gate. The signature at an irreversible gate is the only authority in the company.
A short guide to one idea in Collapse or Collapse by Vinay Pasricha. The book’s own words are in the chapters linked above. The full text, as plain text.