"Okay, then I'm going to rewomble the dinglehop, which should un-galvatrate the percapitator." Why is the SVP in the meeting at all? If they don't want the details, they can't contribute to the change, or even evaluate whether the change makes sense at all. The SVP could be completely removed from this situation and the outcome would be exactly the same. Which shouldn't be surprising, since that's almost always true of all executives anywhere.

> Everyone nods their head, says "that makes sense", and we all move on with our day.

Why? Why do you need to be intimidated into actually making effective change? Why is everyone walking around with their hands tied, unable or afraid to enact change? Probably because of the terrible leadership at this company.

>> "We missed it because Alice was on holiday and Bob thought the Widgets team owned it".

> Okay. How do we make ownership unambiguous when someone is unavailable?

You cannot take this step without details. That Bob-Alice story is the details. You do actually need to know that story before you can take the step of knowing that "unambiguous ownership" would be a worthwhile change to make. What exactly is this SVP doing again?

This entire post could be summarized as "executives are useless" and "do the 5-whys", both of which everyone already knows.