What is coordination overhead?

Example: You are managing a project with three people. Communication is fluid — three bilateral channels, quick sync meetings, fast decisions. Then the project falls behind and someone suggests adding four more people. Now you have seven people and twenty-one communication channels. Meetings that took fifteen minutes take an hour. Every decision requires bringing more people up to speed. Status updates multiply. The new people need onboarding, which pulls the original three off productive work. Two weeks after 'adding resources,' you are further behind than before — not because the new people are incompetent, but because the coordination overhead of seven people exceeds the productive capacity those extra people added. The project did not need more hands. It needed the same hands with less friction between them.

This concept is part of Multi-Agent Coordination in the How to Think curriculum.