Making Meetings Work

This is a summary of a paper prepared by a consultant, Bill Godfrey, called What are the Conditions for Groups to be Productive? Purpose, Structure and Process in Meetings.

Godfrey's thesis is that our decision processes are often clumsy, expensive and fail to flow through to purposeful action.

He suggests that Purposeful Action requires at least three conditions:

Shared clarity of purpose;
The ability to bring together different perspectives, views and ideas in a constructive way;
Alignment of all the people needed to achieve the required outcome around the objective, ie shared understanding of strategies, roles, actions, 'boundaries' etc.

When these three conditions are all in place the results are astounding, but cases are too rare.

For productive meetings five broad factors need to be brought into alignment:

1. The purpose of the meeting

Sort agendas by purpose and subject matter:

"What do we plan to achieve in relation to this issue (or this agenda item) at this meeting?"
"Who (which stakeholders, experts, facilitator etc) needs to be present for the objective to be achieved?"

2. The make-up and structure of the group

Different groups are needed for different purposes:

EITHER - The need to have people who can offer different perspectives - 'get the whole system in the room'
OR - Specific knowledge, skills and, often, positions (authority)
OR - The meeting needs a range of perspectives or mental models - and the capacity to use this difference constructively to support the rhythm of working.

3. The rhythm of working, including time management

There is an almost universal rhythm to moving from a problem or issue to a plan for implementation. It is that of:

DIVERGE

REFLECT

CONVERGE

Godfrey that emphasises the value of dealing with DIVERGENCE - different points of view - thoroughly - before moving to CONVERGENCE or PURPOSEFUL ACTION

He suggests a healthy pattern of decision making gives adequate weight to each of these stages, but that there appears to be cultural bias in the West against divergent thinking and reflection; it is more common to observe a pattern that moves to action without looking at all sides.

The cost of this is failure to identify all valid options, inadequate consideration of new (and sometimes initially 'half-baked') ideas and a tendency to proceed to action within established but unchallenged mental models and without fully bringing the stakeholders on board.

Godfrey has a thoughtful section on:

Divergent Thinking (creating a wide range of possible perspectives, ideas and approaches)
Reflection - as important stages in moving to first Convergent Thinking and then Action.

"In a major workshop, it is important to time breaks (coffee, lunch, dinner) to coincide with times when reflection would be useful, and to remind participants briefly of the issues to be reflected on (e.g. 'when we come back from this break, we will begin working on identifying the key issues from the ideas we have generated').

In a regular management meeting, it may be wise to tackle only one major stage of a decision - e.g. opening up the issue - and to leave the next stage until the next meeting, in order to give time for reflection."
Use the diversity of the meeting

There are marked differences in the preferences of individuals. In any meeting, you will find people who show impatience with divergent thinking and reflection ('why can't we get on with it') and others who seem to delight in introducing new ideas or objections, just when we thought we had reached a decision. Properly balanced and properly used, these differences can add enormously to the 'collective IQ' of the meeting. If they are not recognised and used, they can destroy it.

He suggests the usefulness of eg Myers-Brigg inventories to identify these but there is no doubt that the awareness of different styles of operating can produce positive movement rather than irritation.

4. The tools used for conversation during the meeting

Godfrey suggests consciously using the differences between:

Dialogue (literally 'letting the meaning flow through') slow, reflective, rich in enquiry
Discussion (literally 'beating ideas together'): the balance between advocacy and enquiry, and the level of self disclosure and enquiry about the reasons for statements made,
Debate has a limited place in a genuine search for new and creative solutions to serious issues, though it can be useful as a means of testing the validity of evidence and of propositions that can be characterised as being 'correct' or 'incorrect'.
Godfrey suggests also two important tools, too often neglected: the use of silence and the use of a variety of styles of 'shared mind-map'.
The continuous assault of advocacy in a meeting leaves the brain no time to process what is being said. Even short intervals of silence for reflection can add greatly to the quality of genuine exchange of ideas.
Shared mind maps, developed on a white board during discussion, are an extremely powerful way of arriving at shared understanding of an issue.

5. 'Guardianship' of the selected meeting process

All this indicates that selection and guardianship of the process of the meeting is as important to the outcomes as the content. The processes for driving the issue forward need to be selected deliberately and managed carefully. In principle this can be done by the members of the meeting or by a process facilitator.

'Calling' the Process - Whether a facilitator is used or not, one of the simplest ways of improving meeting quality is to 'call' the process. The Chair or a nominated person or facilitator can do this, or it can be a shared responsibility. For example:

"This is a new item and we need to start by opening up the issues - we are in divergent mode. No criticism of ideas at this stage please."

"My sense is that we have opened the subject well and we need a pause for reflection. Are you happy with that? O.K. 10 minute break, and when we come back we will start grouping and sorting the ideas."

Godfrey's full paper is available. Contact WEXDEV national office.