If your postmortem feels like just another meeting, it is.
Chronos is clock time: calendar slots, agenda blocks, fungible minutes. Kairos is threshold time: stepping out of ordinary work into a container whose rules actually bind. The distinction matters because people do not tell the truth just because you scheduled 90 minutes for it.
Most corporate rituals are chronos disguised as kairos—borrowing solemnity without gravity. Same room, same incentives, same social risk, just a more serious agenda. The official conversation stays clean, and the real one moves to the hallway, the parking lot, the private chat.
When a team needs to name failure, challenge a decision, or say the senior person was wrong, you do not need more time on the calendar. You need different time. If the time does not change the rules, the rules will change the truth.