ENDANGERED SPECIES: THE EFFECTIVE COMMITTEE

Worst.  Meeting.  Ever!

We’ve all been there. The droning.  The room that’s too hot, too cold, too crowded, too deserted so all eyes are on uncomfortable you.  The squeaky chair.  The stale doughnuts and the coffee that burns through your esophagus as if you had ingested lye.  Try to catch a buzz off the whiteboard marker, anyone?

No one’s taking a stand, passive aggressive interchanges grow into a web so dense it becomes impossible to sort out intent, and the meeting concludes.  The outcome is no decision, or a decision so contrary to the benefits presented that you shake your head in wonder.  What a waste of everyone’s time!  Things were hijacked!  What was supposed to happen in there?

Group dynamics are fascinating. Whether it’s observing tribal behavior, participating in collective learning or decision-making, leading board members, or presenting to committee members, my experiences have invariably yielded thought fodder.  By far, the most intriguing and frustrating manifestation of the group process is the committee in all its dysfunctional wonder.

In sales we are taught that all decisions are emotional, then justified with logic. Wikipedia expands:

From a psychological perspective, it is necessary to examine individual decisions in the context of a set of needs, preferences an individual has and values they seek. From a cognitive perspective, the decision making process must be regarded as a continuous process integrated in the interaction with the environment. From a normative perspective, the analysis of individual decisions is concerned with the logic of decision making and rationality and the invariant choice it leads to.^[2]

Never mind that I had to read it about three times to figure out what it was saying.  No wonder outcomes are so unpredictable!  The needs, environmental interactions and rationality of each committee member are subjective!

Leaders get tired of herding committees past the logic watering hole, the oasis of needs, and the irrationality pit stop. It’s even more surprising when the trail drive ends at an entirely different destination!

Facilitators behave with maddening equanimity. It seems to us that no others need take less of a stand – except for the weather forecaster, perhaps.  We can’t stand being “facilitated” into something milk toasted into a totally alien life form when compared to an initial premise or objective, thank you!

I regularly attended committee meetings as a young new hire at a swanky retail firm.  The company was run by four brothers, whose immigrant parents had built a Depression-era dry goods store into a thriving fashion chain.  Elderly Mama G still held sufficient shares to bring her grown-up sons to their knees when sibling rivalry ensued.  In she would swoop, the tires on her yellow Cadillac squealing.  Striding firmly through the front double doors, waving her pocketbook,  she’d browbeat her foolish boys with a thick Lebanese accent.  “Numbskulls!  We do eet like thees! Stop shouting! I love you!  Good-bye!”

Company strategy arose out of this predictable dynamic.  I still laugh: what a way to run a business!  The subversive joke was that Mama G held portions of her sons’ anatomy on reserve and presented them only on occasion.  Whatever we may have thought of her interpersonal skills, Mama circumvented poor group decisions. She would have scoffed at the very notion of facilitating a consensus-based outcome from her darling numbskulls.

Obviously, not every ineffective committee can be rescued by the likes of Mama G.  The University of Sussex has kindly defined an ineffective committee as having “. . . inappropriate or disengaged members, ill informed members who have not received or read the papers, has late circulations or tabled papers, a poorly briefed chair, deals with unnecessary items of business and does not make timely decisions.” Gosh, that’s a daily occurrence in meetings all over the globe.  C-Span has made a killing off the government’s legions of ineffective examples.

Who decided that group decisions are ultimately better in all cases? Certainly there is a need to gather and hear all input and points of view.  But to the point of total breakdown?

Unilateral decision-makers assume all the risk when things go awry.  But don’t we expect leaders to just make the tough decisions? We want our President, our judiciary, our CEO’s and others we elect or expect to represent us to make tough calls.  Instead, we get divergence, poll-taking, dissenting opinions, mangled outcomes and failure to commit.

On the off chance that a leader emerges who does make difficult decisions, the opposition will loudly object to having insufficient part in the process.  Yet, they generally do not provide a viable alternative.  The decision’s effect devolves with misunderstanding and misinterpretation.  By valuing collective decision-making, we have weakened potential outcomes via dilution.  When’s the last time you remember boldness from a committee?

Decisive, bold moves are generally made by individuals, bucking the group-think of advisors.  Remember, it was Ronald Reagan‘s advisory group who admonished him to tone down his speech in Berlin.  Imagine, we’d never have heard, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!” if Reagan had listened to them.

Any salesperson will tell you he dreads presenting to committees.  One can go in with a presentation tailored toward pre-set parameters, and emerge dizzy from the buck-passing that results in no sale.  Take in the scene at a car dealership when wife overrides husband’s sportscar for the mini-van.  Or how about when Mommy and Daddy come house-hunting with newlyweds?  The process malingers.

The University of Sussex reminds us, “An effective Committee has an appropriate membership for its terms of reference, a well briefed Chair, considers items of substantive business and has authority to make informed decisions in a timely manner.”

Committee activities can cluster as follows:

• approve
• recommend
• note
• consider

The last two aren’t really actions.  They’re about keeping an informational record and discussing, which easily lead to nothing.  Recommending moves things along to a higher level of authority.  With only this 25% chance of direct action, it’s no wonder the soup of individual needs, irrationality and environmental interaction is so bland.

The work of committees should yield more than calling additional attention to the matter at hand.  As such, the effective committee is an endangered, if not fairly extinct, species.

We think it’s ironic that elected officials, middle managers, and all sorts of groups have managed to elevate the process of making no decision to a gracefully insidious art form.  What’s even more disappointing is the level of complacency that allows these execrable artisans to get away with the same shenanigans time and again in our workplaces, our government, and our world.

What say you?

Related articles by Zemanta

• I don’t want to start my day with Meetings