Published September 29, 2026 · Altvina Insights · 5 min read

The Meeting Where Nobody Agrees On Last Quarter

Two people in the same small firm can describe the same quarter differently and both be partly right. A short audit shows which of your recurring arguments has nobody behind the number.

Someone says last quarter was the busiest one yet. Someone else in the same room says it only felt that way because of two rough weeks. Both sound certain. Neither can put a number on the table that the other one accepts, so the meeting moves on, and the same argument comes back a few weeks later almost word for word.

We think that is rarely a personality problem. More often the number that would settle it does not exist in a form either person trusts.

Why two people can be right about the same quarter

In a small firm the revenue picture usually lives in pieces. Part of it is in the invoicing tool. Part is in a spreadsheet someone maintains. Part is in the notes on a few big jobs. And part of it, honestly, is in how hard the months felt to the people doing the work.

Each of those pieces is built from a slightly different cut. Invoiced or collected. Retainers counted when signed or when delivered. The paused job in or out. The refund netted off or left to one side.

Two people can each be careful, each use a reasonable definition, and arrive at quarters that do not match. Then the argument becomes about who is remembering wrong, when it is actually about which cut was used.

The number gets built when somebody asks loudly enough

One part of this tends to go unsaid. In most firms at this size the report is not a system. In practice the report is a person.

One person, working by hand, usually when a founder asks for it. That means the question shapes the answer. Ask whether you are busier and the cut that answers busier is the one that gets built. Ask in a bad week and the cut tends to explain the bad week.

So the number ends up reflecting whoever asked last and why they asked, rather than what was true. Nobody is being dishonest. But the people in the room are right to hold it loosely, and once a number is held loosely it cannot end an argument.

The three-decision audit

This takes about twenty minutes and a sheet of paper. You can run it on your own business this week without involving anyone.

1. Name the three decisions you re-argue most

Not your three biggest decisions. The three that keep coming back. Pricing on a particular kind of job. Whether it is time to hire. Whether a difficult client is worth keeping. Which service to push next quarter. Choose by repetition, not importance. A decision that returns every month is telling you something a big one-off decision is not.

2. For each one, ask who owns the number, not the opinion

Plenty of people have a view on each of these. A view is not ownership. Owning the number means four things at once: one named person is responsible for it, there is one agreed definition of what it counts, it gets produced the same way whether or not anyone asked, and both sides of the argument would accept the output before they know which way it points.

That last one is the real test. If a person only accepts the number when it agrees with them, the number is not settling anything.

3. Write a name, or write nobody

Do it honestly. If the truthful answer is that the number appears when you chase it, write nobody.

If you end up with nobody against two of three decisions, you have found the actual finding. Those decisions are not hard. What they lack is an owner. They will keep coming back to the same table until someone owns the input, and no amount of discussion in the meeting will change that, because the meeting is not where the problem lives.

What to do with a decision that has nobody

The instinct is usually to build a dashboard. We would hold off on that. A dashboard with no agreed definition behind it just moves the argument onto a screen.

Start smaller. Pick the one definition you will use, and write it down in a single sentence, including the awkward edges: what counts, when it counts, what is excluded. Name the person who produces it. Agree how often it appears without being requested. Then let the next meeting test it.

A definition someone disagrees with, written down and applied the same way every month, is more useful than a perfect number that only exists when the founder asks for it.

Some of these arguments do not need a number at all

This is worth being plain about, because the audit will turn up decisions that no data will ever close.

Whether you want more of a certain kind of work is not a numbers question. Neither is how much risk you are willing to carry, or whether a client relationship is worth the weight it puts on the team. Those are judgment calls. Chasing a figure for them is a way of avoiding the call.

A judgment call still stops repeating once someone is named to make it. So mark those decisions as judgment and write down whose judgment it is. A middle group also exists, mostly judgment but with one fact that would narrow it, and for those it helps to say out loud which single fact you are missing.

The output of the audit is a short list. Which of your recurring arguments has a real owner, which has nobody, and which will never be settled by a number. Three lines is usually enough. It tends to change what the next meeting sounds like, mostly because people stop arguing about a quarter neither of them can prove.

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