The Reactor in the Room

Scene

The partners meet every Monday at 8am in the boardroom above the reception area. It is three partners, a practice manager, and one senior staff member. The agenda is printed and sitting on the table.

At 7.55am the office manager walks in with a message. A long-term client in Brisbane is “furious” about a missed call and a slow email response. One partner takes the call in the hallway, comes back in hot, and puts the complaint on the table.

The fee review is dropped. The discussion on staffing for the Sunshine Coast work is pushed. The team spends the full hour rewriting response times and promising discounts for this one client. No one records a decision.

By 9am, nothing on the agenda is done. The week has been set by one incident.

Pattern: Emotional Governance

This is Emotional Governance inside a professional firm. The room takes its pace and focus from the most reactive person present.

The agenda exists, but any complaint, delay, or cash wobble can displace it. Partner meetings turn into live incident response. Structural items are labelled “when we have time”.

On the surface, the firm looks responsive. In practice, the business runs on mood. Staff learn that raising issues loudly gets faster outcomes than following process. Plans lose status because everyone knows they will shift after the next flare-up.

Analysis: How Crisis Becomes the Operating System

Analysis: When Crisis Sets the Run-Sheet

In professional firms and SME’s, this pattern builds quietly.

1. Trigger. A client is upset, a key staff member resigns, or a debtor delays payment again. The message lands via text or WhatsApp before anyone sits down.
2. Pre-meeting. Partners reply in fragments on the way in. By the time they meet, positions are fixed. One partner is protective of the client. Another is defensive about the file.
3. Hijack. The first ten minutes of the meeting are spent retelling the incident. The printed agenda is moved to one side. Time-sensitive topics, like hiring or pricing, drift down the list.
4. Fast fix. To release tension, the room agrees to immediate concessions, policy changes, or extra write-offs. Documentation is thin. The practice manager scribbles notes with no clear owner.
5. Flow-on. Staff hear instructions third-hand. Previous decisions on pricing, staffing, or client selection are diluted without a formal reversal. People start waiting to see what will change after the next blow-up.
6. Lock-in. Over time, “hot” issues always win time. Medium-term risks never get through. The most reactive person in the room becomes the default decision-maker.

By the time someone calls external help, the firm has a long trail of exceptions, reversals, and unwritten deals. The problem is presented as “personality clashes”. The root cause is structural: there is no separation between incident response and governance.

Framework: Assess → Align → Act

Assess – Map Where Emotion Drives Decisions

Take one focused hour with the partners and practice manager:

1. List the last ten meaningful decisions: write-offs, hiring, exits, office moves, big discounts, new practice areas.
2. For each, note:
1. What triggered it.
2. Where it was decided (text, corridor, partner meeting, board coffee).
3. How soon after the trigger it was made.
3. Mark anything decided inside 24 hours of an incident.

You now have a clear view of how often crisis is setting timing and forum.

Align – Split Incidents from Governance

In a short working session:

1. Define what counts as an “incident” in your firm: real legal exposure, major client risk, or staff safety. Keep the list tight.
2. Nominate an Incident Lead for clients, people, and money. One name per area.
3. Nominate a Governance Chair whose role is to protect the agenda and sequence.
4. Agree a cooling-off rule: no changes to pricing, staffing structure, or service standards within 48–72 hours of an incident unless there is clear regulatory or legal risk.

Write this onto a single page. Share it with senior staff. This becomes the reference point when the next incident lands.

Act – Cooling-Off Protocol + Second Brain™

Convert this into daily practice:

1. Create two separate forums:
1. Incident Response (fast, narrow, focused on immediate risk).
2. Governance (scheduled, structured, focused on the firm).
2. Any incident-driven proposal that affects structure, pricing, or people must be documented on one page: trigger, options, costs, and recommendation.
3. Default rule: these proposals are parked into the next Governance meeting, after the cooling-off period.
4. Maintain a simple decision log with: date, decision, owner, rationale, and review date.

The Second Brain™ retainer sits behind this. It holds the log, tracks what was promised in the heat of the moment, and brings those promises back to the table in sequence. It provides continuity when one partner is away or when tempers rise.

Tool: The Monday Meeting Stress Test

A 45-minute exercise for any firm:

1. Take the last eight Monday (or main) leadership meetings.
2. For each, answer:
1. Did an incident change the agenda?
2. What was dropped or delayed?
3. Was any incident-driven decision later changed or quietly ignored?
3. Count:
• How many meetings were hijacked.
• How many “hot” decisions were reversed within three months.

If most of your structural decisions come from hijacked meetings and later change, Emotional Governance is active.

Why It Matters

Calm is a commercial edge. Firms that let the loudest problem set the agenda burn partner time, erode margin through ad hoc concessions, and confuse staff. Medium-term risks and opportunities in markets move on while the firm is still reacting to last week’s email.

Separating incident response from governance returns control to the owners. It gives clients consistency, staff clarity, and partners space to think in order, not in panic.

If this sounds like a firm you advise, introduce them to The Unravelling Map™ and the Second Brain™ retainer before the next Monday meeting is set by whoever walks in most upset.