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  • Sometimes It Actually Works

    By Dean Dad June 11, 2009 4:29 am

    Like Tolstoy's unhappy families, every bad meeting is bad in its own particular way. Some elements of lousy meetings are common enough to be recognizable from afar: domination by blowhards, poorly constructed agendas, leaders playing “guess what I'm thinking.” But even without the obvious hazards, meetings can go wrong in so many ways that those of us who endure more than most learn pretty quickly to lower our expectations.

    Maybe that's why this one came as such a welcome surprise. Once in a while, the planets align, and a meeting you fully expect to be nothing more than pedestrian actually achieves something that could not have been achieved any other way.

    It started inauspiciously. It was an end-of-year wrap-up for a task force. There was the usual perfunctory recap of the year, an outline of things to come next year, a few questions, some jokes, and a bit of news. Then someone brought up an email flame war that had ensued a few weeks earlier.

    As with so many conflicts, it was both heartfelt and fundamentally stupid. It grew out of a real-life version of the old game “telephone.” A condensed version:

    Group A is served by Program A, which does a good job. The leaders of Program B, which offers similar services, decide to target Group B, on the theory that Group A is already served. Someone on the front lines hears that Program A is for Group A and Program B for Group B. Member of Group A asks about Program B, and is told on front lines that “it's not for you.” Someone from Program A hears that members of Group A are being excluded from Program B, and charges discrimination. Program B offers irrelevant response, not having any idea where the charges came from. Long, very angry emails start flying. Personal grudges are given airtime under cover of the latest conflict. Sinister agendas are imputed. Nobody can exactly pin down just what the hell happened.

    Yuck.

    This meeting wasn't intended to address that, but the issue came up, and people from both A and B were there. And in one of those moments that people in my job live for...

    People actually listened to each other, and pieced together what had happened. People admitted confusion, told their truths, and listened. And as the fragments of truth spilled out, we were able to put them together in a narrative that explained it all without ascribing bad intentions to anybody. After about forty minutes of discussion – much of it relatively animated – we realized that while there were clearly some communication mistakes, we didn't have to demonize anybody to explain them. Both programs were honestly trying to do the right thing. The issue was a lack of a shared context, which is fixable.

    To normal people, this is probably about as exciting as toast. But to administrative types like me, this is what a clean win looks like. We all came out of that meeting with a clearer understanding of what had happened, able to both explain and discount the flame war, and able to take steps to prevent similar failings in the future. We were able to redirect our energies from internal politics to serving the students. And we experienced a meeting that actually worked.

    I don't think that could have worked over email. When an entire group is bushwhacking together, there's an electricity in the room that just doesn't happen asynchronously. And the loss of interruptibility, intonation cues, and body language (among other things) in email can make it harder to convey a certain kind of productive confusion. (It can be done, but most people aren't terribly artful writers.) This group – spontaneously – took a chance on uncertainty, and won.

    Sometimes it actually works. Even this jaded veteran of task force meetings had to smile.

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Comments on Sometimes It Actually Works

  • Groups A + B
  • Posted by Pedestrian on June 11, 2009 at 9:30am EDT

  • Ummm, ok. I guess you had to be there...

  • Like a well-executed throw to first
  • Posted by John on June 11, 2009 at 12:15pm EDT

  • It should happen more often, but doesn't. I think we lose sight of the real reason for meeting: To gather all of the relevant principles together in a room, agree on the definition of the problem, develop a set of possible solutions, and agree on the answer.

    I guess you're a real administrator when you appreciate the beauty of the formula for the rarity of the positive outcomes.

  • committees and transformative leadership
  • Posted by Chris Paris , English Dept. at University of the Incarnate Word on June 11, 2009 at 6:00pm EDT

  • I guess I would agree with Group A & B's economical comment. We don't know the intricacies of the agenda. And, physically being there is probably the key to "healthy, productive conflict." E-mails too easily remove potential combatant types with hidden agenda from physically facing their targets; physical presence among all participants normalizes urbanity by emphasizing ownership in participation, and opens opportunities for response to all participants with spontenaity--every participant's right. It's easy to snipe behind written lingo. But, I suspect three elements for potentials of dissolution: 1) pre-existing festering polemics; 2) leadership issues; 3) leadership acculturations.

    Y'all may find this an irony, but my institution thrives on committee work, simply because of its pre-existing democratic culture. We perceive committees as opportunities to participate in governance to initiate change for the common good. Every initiative has the opportunity for that, no matter how big or small, even if the conclusive results are findings and recommendations then made public to the entire institution.

    A number of years ago, so inspired was I by my institution's investment in shared governance, that I presented models of transformative leadership to a national Deans conference. My audience looked at me like I had two heads, and it went over like a wet baloon. They weren't listening, I suspect, so entrenched and defeated were they in bureaucracy. But, still today, I say it doesn't matter how bureaucratic your institution may be, whether public or private, you can defeat paralyzing polemics and individualized anarchies, and up-down bureaucratic domains with transformative models. The chair is not the boss, but only the facilitator working for everybody's investment in the goal; everyone is equal in participation; everyone airs his or her views for the value of the goal; everything is decided and acted on with consensus; everyone is in agreement before the committee takes the next progressive step; the chair facilitates the navigations, and, sometimes, needs to just let go and let consensus rule with confidence in the equal participants; then, jump back in when the time is right to bring everybody together at moments of commonality. Everybody has to listen carefully, as well as speak.

    Five years ago, I presented the models to eastern European institutions at a conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. One jaded administrator in the audience, said, "and, how and when, do you suppose, are you supposed to do this?" My answer was, "anywhere, any time, starting right now." It's that simple. Just do it. And, start to change the culture. Start small and grow big with the enlightenment in what you accomplish. We can work within the up-down and make it longitudinal for us; we can even cross bureaucratic boundaries by attracting receptive neighbors and including them equally in our initiatives, even if, in the beginning, the results are just legitimate findings that can provoke change. It's all up to us. We don't have to wait for somebody else to do it. The bureaucracy will never offer up that leader to us. WE are its leaders.

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