It was early 2005 and I was sitting in a seminar room at Kansai Gaidai University, half-listening to a lecture on Japanese business culture.

The professor wrote a word on the board: 根回し (nemawashi).

Literally, it means "going around the roots," a gardening term for preparing a tree’s root system before transplanting it. In business, it means something simpler but equally important: socializing a decision before the meeting happens.

I wrote it down. Filed it away. Didn’t think much of it.

Twenty years later, I think about it almost every week.

The meeting is almost never where alignment happens.

The meeting is where alignment gets confirmed. Or worse, where misalignment gets exposed in front of everyone, turning what should have been a five-minute approval into an awkward thirty-minute debate while people shift in their chairs.

Nemawashi is the opposite. It’s the one-on-one coffee chat before the team sync. The chat message that says, "Hey, thinking about proposing X. Wanted to get your read first." The ten-minute call where someone can say, "I have concerns," without twelve people watching.

When I do it well, meetings feel almost ceremonial. Everyone already knows the shape of the decision. Questions have been asked and answered. Objections have been heard and either addressed or acknowledged. The room isn’t tense. It’s just ready.

I’ll be honest: I forget to do this more than I’d like.

Sometimes I’m in a rush. Sometimes I convince myself the decision is too small to bother previewing. Sometimes I just want to get to the meeting and be done with it.

And every time I skip it, I pay a tax.

Someone feels blindsided. A concern that could have been handled quietly becomes a public standoff. The meeting runs long. People leave feeling like they weren’t consulted, even if the decision was the right one.

The irony is brutal. Skipping the pre-work to save time almost always costs more time.

There’s something else nemawashi does that I didn’t appreciate at first.

It gives people permission to disagree.

In a big meeting, with peers watching, it’s hard to raise a concern. You don’t want to look difficult. You don’t want to derail the agenda. So you stay quiet, and then the resentment festers.

But in a one-on-one, the stakes are lower. The walls come down. Someone can say, "I’m not sure this is right," without feeling like they’re staging a mutiny.

Even if the decision doesn’t change, they feel heard. And feeling heard is often the difference between buy-in and compliance.

A professor taught me this twenty years ago.

I’m still learning how to do it well.

But when I remember, when I take the time to go around the roots before transplanting, the whole thing just works better.

The meeting becomes a formality.

And everyone arrives already aligned.