In most organizations, good news travels on its own. Someone closes a deal and the whole office knows by lunch. Bad news moves differently. It gets softened, delayed, or quietly buried until it's too late to do anything about it.
Dispatch is the antidote. It is a 5-minute segment at the top of every Line meeting with one rule: information moves at the same speed regardless of whether it's good or bad.
What Dispatch is
Dispatch is a broadcast, not a discussion. Company news, wins, losses, announcements, and anything the room needs to know before the work starts. Each person shares what's relevant. The group listens. Nobody digs in or debates. If something surfaces that needs attention, it goes on the issues list and gets worked in Issues time.
Why it's named Dispatch
A dispatch is news that needs to move. The word implies urgency by default. It doesn't distinguish between good news and bad news — both get dispatched. That's the point.
What goes in Dispatch
Wins worth celebrating. Deals closed, milestones hit, problems solved. Say them out loud. Recognition matters.
Problems the room needs to know about. A client is unhappy. A hire fell through. A metric is trending wrong. If it's going to affect the business, it belongs in Dispatch — not in a private message or a sidebar after the meeting.
Announcements with organizational impact. Personnel changes, process shifts, external news that affects the team's work.
What does not go in Dispatch
Discussion. If something needs to be worked, it goes on the issues list. Dispatch is not the place to solve problems — it's the place to surface them.
The test
After six months of running Dispatch consistently, ask: does your team surface bad news as fast as good news? If the answer is yes, the discipline is working. If bad news still arrives late, filtered, or buried, Dispatch hasn't been held to its standard.