The Wheel on the Whiteboard

We were all looking at the whiteboard, waiting for someone to make the first move. The project plan was a tangle of ideas, and the silence was starting to feel heavy. I remember glancing around the room, seeing the same hesitation on a few other faces.

When the silence gets too loud

It wasn't a disagreement, really. It was more like we had too many decent starting points and no clear reason to pick one over the others. The project lead had drawn this simple wheel on the board, dividing it into sections. It felt like a small, neutral gesture in the middle of all that quiet.She didn't explain it much, just asked us to call out options for how to begin. Someone suggested reviewing the client brief again. Another person mentioned mapping out dependencies first. We just filled the wheel with the possibilities already hanging in the air.

Letting the wheel decide

There was a slight shift when she spun the marker to choose a section. It wasn't about the 'best' idea anymore, just about having *an* idea to start with. The tension in my shoulders loosened a bit. It removed the burden of having to advocate for one approach over another in that moment.The chosen option wasn't revolutionary. It was the logical first step half of us were probably thinking anyway. But because the wheel pointed to it, it just became the task. We all nodded, and someone immediately started writing the first agenda item. The meeting had a direction.

The relief of a neutral arbiter

It felt fair. No one's pet idea was shot down, and no one had to feel like they forced their preference on the group. The wheel was just a mechanism, and we all agreed to abide by it.

Momentum over perfection

That's what I remember most—the immediate shift from stalled to moving. We spent the next forty-five minutes productively working on the path it gave us, instead of using that time debating the path itself.