Effective Meetings

Improving Group Decision Making

John E. Tropman

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781483340210
• eBook ISBN: 9781483365640
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Sozialarbeit

Lauded for its accessible format and humorous writing style, Effective Meetings: Improving Group Decision Making, offers practical strategies for running effective meetings by highlighting the processes involved in decision making and the ways individuals contribute to making better quality decisions as a group.
 
The Third Edition of this brief text begins with guidelines for effective decision making, then covers topics that include member recruitment, meeting preparation, agenda building, and the positions and roles required for effective meeting outcomes. Subsequent chapters deal with electronic meeting formats, the chair and participants, and the various types of meeting groups such as boards, advisory groups, and staff groups.

Author John E. Tropman teaches at the University of Michigan in the School of Social Work, the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, and the Executive Education Programs. Dr. Tropman also works with for-profit, nonprofit, and government entities in a consultative capacity.

1

The Modern Decision Group

Bill Walker and Travis Smith were talking after the monthly board meeting of Bootstrap, Inc., a local voluntary agency.

“I don’t know why these meetings are so bad,” Bill said.

“Me either,” said Travis. “They go on and on, and everybody seems to want to put his oar in.”

“It’s the same on a couple of other boards that I’m on,” Bill said. “They seem to be in trouble all the time.”

“Now that you mention it, it’s the same at work too,” Travis added. “My weekly production meeting never gets anything done, but we always must have it, it seems.”

“Still,” Bill said, “we can’t do it all ourselves.”

“You’re right,” said Travis. “And with all the competition today, we have to engage in more collaborative efforts. Unless we do better at meetings, we will never survive!”

Today’s nonprofits live in an increasingly complex society. More and more, groups, teams, and committees are the center of decision-making activity. Most organizational actions and decisions are reviewed, or actually created, by one or more decision groups. This is true both within an organization and in an interorganizational network. As we continue into the 21st century, we need increasing numbers of decision groups to handle our daily business.

EFFICIENT MEETINGS AND EFFECTIVE DECISION MAKING

Decision-making groups are formed for one purpose only: to make decisions. There are three foci of decision work: preparing both intellectually and logistically for the meeting, discussing options and developing alternatives, and selecting the alternative or alternatives to act upon. When groups do this, they experience accomplishment; accomplishment is self- and group-reinforcing. What is important is to develop a structure that makes this accomplishment possible and a culture that supports it.

STRUCTURE: POOR RULES AND ROLES: WHY DECISION GROUPS OFTEN DO NOT WORK WELL

A rules perspective suggests that a few relatively simple rules or “recipes” involving the details of preparation for a decision-group meeting can immensely enhance the productivity of the meeting.

Similarly, the roles perspective suggests that members must play crucial positions within the decision-group framework, but frequently we have almost no idea about what these positions are—except in the most general sense—or how to play them. Typically, little thought has been given to position flexibility and facility. Most of the time, we shift from one position to another as we move through the day—sometimes a chair, sometimes a member, sometimes providing staff and executive service to a group, and then back again to chair. These changes in positions are rarely accompanied by actual changes in behavior. Even when people know what is expected of them, they may not know what behaviors will realize these expectations.

Much needs to be done before we even get to the meeting at which decisions are to be made. A more complete knowledge of what the work is and a more disciplined performance of that work will result in vastly enhanced decision-group performance.

The meeting itself is an end point in a long series of activities, rather than the beginning point. Once the meeting begins, the course of events is heavily influenced by what has (or more often, has not) happened before it began. The best opportunities for influence and structuring exist during that premeeting period. Once the meeting begins, it is generally too late to be effective, and while good results can occur, they usually do so by chance.

As mentioned above, troublesome people—toxic group members—can “poison the well” of meetings and decision groups. But, contrary to what many believe, personality is not as important as knowing one’s position. It is not so much how charismatic or powerful we are as it is whether we learn the role for our position and play it correctly. The roles approach adopts the perspective Erving Goffman develops in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). He looks at life as a play and people as actors in that play. Hence, the meeting can be seen as a play performance—sometimes a history, sometimes a drama, sometimes a comedy, sometimes all three! If the decision-group meeting is a play and decision-group members as players, then everyone needs a script (and the script can allow for improvisation). Everyone has to know his or her role, and all must play their roles properly.

But a performance is not good enough unless it achieves a goal. Thus, a good meeting must be more than entertainment. It must achieve purpose and provide accomplishment, enabling decision-group members to make excellent decisions, not just “any old decision.” All too often, groups—through impatience, exhaustion, and irritation—are satisfied with any decision, achieving suboptimality if not negativity in the decision or action. We look at examples of “Rotten Decisions” in Chapter 5. Participants are so grateful to avoid chaos and actually get something done that they pay little attention to whether that something is of high quality. Thus, we will consider not only the rules for and positions in decision-group participation but also the results of those processes. After all, if decision groups are assembled to make decisions, we cannot measure decision-group performance by whether the meeting room was well ventilated or the coffee arrived on time (however important these props may be for setting the committee stage). Rather, we should look at the decision itself and ask, “Is it a good decision?” “Is it a poor decision?” “Are we possibly worse off after making the decision than we were before?”

There are, of course, other kinds of groups—social or personal groups formed for a variety of purposes. These groups can also be functions, and a decision group may have a decision-making phase and then a social phase in a single session.

So we should distinguish very carefully among the functions and purposes that decision-making groups have. Even fact-finding groups are set up to make decisions about facts. If a group is established to make decisions, as decision groups are, then everything done within the group should be aimed toward enhancing and facilitating the making of those decisions.

Frequently implicit in this kind of analysis, and frequently explicit in suggestions for improvement, is a series of remedies that involve shaping the personalities of difficult members or, failing that, removing them in some overt or subtle way. Yet after spending a good bit of time in the decision-group and board-activity realm, it becomes clear that personality is less important than initially thought. When one Arthur Angry is removed, someone else takes his place. From a structural perspective, it is wise to consider the extent to which elements of group structure may be as responsible for decision-group and board problems as the personalities of the members. That is the perspective offered here.

Problems Decision Groups Encounter

Decision groups don’t work well because five elements of quality decision-group function are not addressed for and by the group and the group’s leader(s).

Basic perspectives for high-quality decision-group meetings:

1. Set expectations aimed at accomplishment.

2. Provide the intellectual background for decision work, and expect participants to be familiar with this material.

3. Provide scripts (agendas).

4. Inform participants about position requirements.

5. Strive for high-quality decisions. (See Exercise 1.1 at the end of this chapter.)

Unless these elements are incorporated in decision-group structure, decision-group competence gives way to decision-group chaos. Expectations are not set; scripts are not available; people are ignorant about their positions; and they fail to strive for high-quality decisions. These challenges represent additional superordinate problems with which decision groups must deal. They are often a step removed from the actual apparent problem, the nitty-gritty difficulty of planning the church supper or developing a social plan for the PTA this year.

Michael Cohen and James G. March (1974) suggest four additional reasons for problems in group functioning, which I adapt for use here:

Low salience

High inertia

Burnout

Decision overload

I’ll explain what they mean.

Low Salience

The bulk of decision-group work is of low salience. Decisions that are relatively trivial in nature are brought to the agenda. Frequently, management problems within the decision group lend these decisions great importance. Whether we should have square or round wastebaskets is a topic that can consume a great deal of attention. One person reported a meeting that involved the approval of popcorn poppers for a PTA. Somebody said the PTA should get a popcorn popper that would pop all the kernels because she had broken her tooth on an unpopped kernel! Another member added, “Well, it wasn’t really the popper, it was really the oil” and began to suggest proper oils for popping corn. A third member then added that it wasn’t really the popper or the oil; it was the corn itself. This person recommended a famous brand. When still another individual added that it was really neither the oil nor the corn but the heat, the meeting collapsed into decision-group chaos. Here was a group of community leaders, who had taken time out of a busy day to do important work, sitting around discussing how to pop corn! It can drive even the most dedicated decision-group member crazy. We therefore need to think about the ways in which low-salience items can be handled quickly and high-salience items can be given proper attention.

High Inertia

Decision groups often suffer from high inertia. Like the water buffalo, they are hard to get going and hard to stop. Therefore, it is appropriate to have a set of procedures that make decision-group start-up easier, with particular attention to the hard work of the start-up phase.

Burnout

Decision groups are subject to burnout. A self-fulfilling prophecy is created by the decision-group environment. A decision group perceived as an effective decision-making body is likely to be asked to do more (as are individuals perceived as effective decision makers). At a certain point, without proper techniques of agenda management and mission control, the decision group may have more to do than it can reasonably accomplish. As a result it may begin not to do things that people expect of it. You’ve probably witnessed more than one effective decision group struggling under such a load that it rapidly sinks into incompetence. At that point, people—frequently the same people who made additional requests in the first place—point out that decision groups, after all, cannot do anything. But it may be too late for the decision group. The process of deterioration has set in, and, there comes ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• SAGE Human Services Guides
• Title
• Copyright
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1  The Modern Decision Group
• Part I. Rules for Effective Group Decision Making
• Part II. Positions and Roles for Effective Group Decision Making
• Part III. Different Kinds of Decision Groups
• Part IV. Decision Management and Decision Building: Achieving High-Quality Decisions
• Appendix 1  Embracing the Digital: Group Membership in a Technological World
• Appendix 2  Annotated Bibliography
• Appendix 3  Suggested Reading
• References
• Index
• About the Author
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