Topics that came back in this meeting because they were stranded in a previous one — coordination failures from the past, now consuming time in the present.
Direct Answer
Recurring Coordination Debt counts topics that resurfaced in this meeting after being parked or escalated in a prior meeting without resolution. These are not new agenda items — they are old ones returning. They were set aside before, either because the group couldn't resolve them at the time or consciously deferred them, but without the structural follow-through that would have routed them to resolution. Now they are back, consuming the time of everyone in this meeting, often in a context further from the original problem. Recurring Coordination Debt is the backward-looking counterpart to Zombie Topics: it shows where past parking failures are now compounding.
A single topic resurfacing is noise. It might be genuinely new information that reactivates a closed item, or a stakeholder who was legitimately excluded from the original conversation. But when the same types of topics keep resurfacing — when a team's meetings consistently revisit previously parked items — that is structural. Sam Kaner, in Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making (Jossey-Bass, 2007), identifies the root cause precisely: when a group parks a topic informally without an assigned owner, the direct result is that "no one takes responsibility, and nothing happens." The item doesn't resolve; it bleeds back. Recurring Coordination Debt makes this pattern visible: not as a count of bad meetings, but as a signal that something about how this team parks, escalates, or follows through is producing a compounding result.
Each recurrence costs more than the original conversation would have. When a topic resurfaces in a new meeting, the group must first reconstruct the context — what was discussed before, what was decided (or not), what has changed since. Research on distributed team coordination identifies this reconstruction overhead as a specific failure mode for remote and hybrid teams: without cleanly documented closures, distributed teams suffer "context gaps" in subsequent interactions, characterized by team members asking "What did I miss?" or "Can you give me the background on this?" before the substantive discussion can even begin. The overhead grows with the length of time between the original conversation and the recurrence. A topic that resurfaces the following week costs some reconstruction time. The same topic three months later may require the group to essentially restart from first principles.
High Recurring Coordination Debt points to one of three structural root causes: the team consistently parks items without next steps (generating zombie topics that return), the team consistently fails to route escalations (generating unrouted escalations that come back), or the team's partial closures are not followed up before the next meeting (generating rework). Identifying which root cause is driving the pattern changes the intervention entirely.
David Snowden's Cynefin framework adds a second diagnostic dimension: recurrence type maps to a specific category of structural failure. If a topic is endlessly analyzed without ever producing action, the team may be misdiagnosing a genuinely complex problem as a merely complicated one — applying expert analysis to something that requires experimentation instead. If a topic is chronically re-litigated — reliably reopened in a way that feels like starting over — Cynefin identifies this as a signal that the team has drifted into what Snowden calls "Disorder": authority is ambiguous, ownership has collapsed, and no decision-making framework is operating. Each pattern requires a different response. Recurring Coordination Debt, read against these categories, becomes a window into how the team is failing structurally, not just how often.
The Cynefin framework also supplies the metric's most important limit. Recurring Coordination Debt assumes that a topic resurfacing represents a structural failure — debt that should have been prevented. This is accurate in Ordered domains (Clear and Complicated), where best practices or expert analysis should yield a final, stable answer. In the Complex domain — where cause and effect are only coherent in retrospect and patterns emerge rather than being designed — repeated discussion and revisiting of a topic is not coordination debt. It is the correct process: a Probe-Sense-Respond cycle where returning to the question with new information is how progress actually happens. Teams working on emergent, genuinely uncertain problems should read their Recurring Coordination Debt scores with this distinction in mind, separating structural recurrence from iterative inquiry.
Zombie Topics and Recurring Coordination Debt are the two ends of the same cycle. A Zombie Topic is a deferred item that has not yet resurfaced — the debt being created now. Recurring Coordination Debt is a previously deferred item that is now resurfacing — the debt being called in. When a team addresses its Zombie Topics by giving them proper next steps, it prevents them from becoming Recurring Coordination Debt. When Recurring Coordination Debt is high and Zombie Topics remain unaddressed, the cycle compounds: the team is creating new debt faster than it is resolving old debt.
Kaner, S., Lind, L., Toldi, C., Fisk, S., & Berger, D. (2007). Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader's framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68–76. (Cynefin framework; Disorder domain; Complex domain; Probe-Sense-Respond.)
"When a group parks a topic informally without an assigned owner, no one takes responsibility and nothing happens — and the issue bleeds back into future meetings." — Sam Kaner
Recurring Coordination Debt counts topics that resurfaced in this meeting after being parked or escalated in a prior meeting without resolution. These are not new agenda items — they are old ones returning. They were set aside before, either because the group couldn't resolve them at the time or consciously deferred them, but without the structural follow-through that would have routed them to resolution. Now they are back, consuming the time of everyone in this meeting, often in a context further from the original problem. Recurring Coordination Debt is the backward-looking counterpart to Zombie Topics: it shows where past parking failures are now compounding.
A topic is naturally revisited when genuinely new information, a changed context, or a newly relevant stakeholder warrants reopening it. That is healthy updating. Recurring Coordination Debt is when a topic comes back because it was never structurally resolved the first time — it was parked without a next step, escalated without a carrier, or partially closed without an owner. The difference is the cause of the recurrence: new information versus structural incompleteness.
Three structural root causes: parking topics without next steps (creating zombie topics that return), failing to route escalations (creating unrouted escalations that resurface), or producing partial closures that are not followed up before the next meeting (creating rework). David Snowden's Cynefin framework adds a second diagnostic lens: the type of recurrence maps to a specific failure. Endless analysis without action suggests a Complex problem being treated as Complicated — apply expert analysis and it still won't resolve. Chronic re-litigation suggests the team has drifted into Disorder — authority is ambiguous, ownership has collapsed, and no decision-making framework is operating. Each pattern requires a different response.
They are the two ends of the same cycle. Zombie Topics are deferred items from this meeting that have not yet resurfaced — the debt being created now. Recurring Coordination Debt is deferred items from prior meetings that are resurfacing now — the debt being called in. Addressing Zombie Topics by giving them proper next steps prevents them from becoming Recurring Coordination Debt. When both metrics are high simultaneously, the cycle is compounding: the team is creating new debt faster than it is resolving old debt.
Not always. Snowden's Cynefin framework distinguishes between Ordered domains — where problems have stable answers and a topic resurfacing is a genuine structural failure — and the Complex domain, where cause and effect are only coherent in retrospect. In genuinely complex environments, repeated discussion is not coordination debt; it is the correct process. A Probe-Sense-Respond cycle requires returning to a question with new information as patterns emerge. Teams working on emergent, uncertain problems should interpret their Recurring Coordination Debt scores with this distinction in mind, separating structural recurrence from necessary iteration.
Items parked in this meeting without a next step — the debt being created
Escalations agreed but with no one carrying them forward
The partial closures from this meeting most likely to resurface
The per-meeting composite score across all five coordination dimensions
Understanding the structural causes of recurring agenda items
ResearchHow organizations ensure decisions stay closed
Community ResearchHow organizational gaps create cascading coordination problems
Category DefinitionThe framework for coordinated, durable decisions
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