Why Senior Leaders Should Stop Having So Many One-on-Ones
Cross-Functional Meetings Boost Enterprise Capability and Reduce Fragmentation
One-on-one (1:1) meetings are typically viewed as essential for alignment and decision-making in large organizations. However, the article posits that at the senior executive level, this structure works against the organization’s best interests, leading to functional fragmentation and isolation.
While 1:1s may be useful lower down (for guiding middle managers or individual contributors), for C-suite leaders, an over-reliance on 1:1 meetings creates four core problems:
The Hidden Costs of Executive 1:1 Meetings
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Fragmented Governance: Each 1:1 acts as a private, mini steering committee. This results in informal, duplicative governance that requires follow-up meetings and rework to keep others informed. Unconsidered viewpoints surface later, leading to avoidable friction.
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Functional Bias: One-on-ones reinforce the view of the organization as isolated departments rather than an interconnected web of capabilities. This strengthens functional silos and forces the CEO to act as the sole integrator of all cross-functional perspectives.
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Decision Repackaging: Executives waste time repeating, defending, or translating privately made decisions, which breeds misalignment and slows momentum downstream. It also enables leaders to use 1:1s to subtly influence or “game the system.”
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Executive Rivalry and Collusion: Ambition and succession dynamics can turn 1:1s into arenas for inside influence. Leaders gain implied status by referencing private access (“In my 1:1 with Bill…”), eroding collective trust. CEOs can also undermine psychological safety by using 1:1s to “extract inside scoops” about other team members.
The Solution: Capability Meetings
The alternative is to restructure executive time by convening small, cross-functional “capability meetings” (1:2 or 1:3 conversations). These meetings are organized around how enterprise value is genuinely created, for instance, focusing on the seams between functions where innovation or customer experience actually resides.
Five ways to implement this shift:
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Reserve 1:1s for Development: Shift 1:1s to a quarterly cadence and dedicate them solely to the individual’s growth, feedback, and long-term career development. These 90-minute sessions should be clearly labeled and focused on reflection, avoiding tactical issues entirely.
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Convene Around Core Capabilities: Map the organization’s most critical capabilities (e.g., digital transformation, customer loyalty) and create standing “capability councils.” These groups bring together the two to four most essential functions needed to deliver that value, serving as the forum for near-term cross-functional decision-making and trade-offs.
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Ensure the Right People are Listening: Use capability meetings to gather the specific leaders whose functions intersect on an issue. This ensures those who need to understand and act on information hear the context in real-time, eliminating the need to be briefed later and preventing misalignment.
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Elevate Executive Team Time: By moving execution and cross-functional trade-offs into the smaller capability meetings, the full executive team’s time is freed up. This allows them to focus on strategic sensemaking, cultural stewardship, and long-horizon, enterprise-wide bets, rather than managing interpersonal fallout or relitigating decisions.
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Minimize Executive Rivalry: Shifting operational discussions into transparent, small-group formats replaces the “I know something you don’t” dynamic with mutual accountability and shared context. This reduces back-channel gossip, fosters genuine trust, and makes it clear that real influence comes from collaboration, not proximity to the CEO.
Ultimately, this transformation is about leadership effectiveness. The role of senior executives is to enable the organization’s full capacity to perform, which requires leading the seams where value is created, not just managing the silos.
