Business Management Life

Much of the business of the world takes place in meetings, both big and small. If youve been in many meetings, youve probably experienced ineffective meetings that seemed like a waste of time.

Parliamentary procedures has developed as a way to help deliberative assemblies of all sizes efficiently and effectively handle their business. Some see these procedures as a rigid set of rules that are obstructions to getting things done. Sometimes these rules have be used and abused without understanding of the concepts and values they are meant to embody.

Three concepts that underlie proper parliamentary procedure help keep meetings on track and on time. I call them the three ones. Use these concepts to improve you next meeting whether or not you are using formal parliamentary procedure.

ONE THING AT A TIME

The first concept is that a group should only consider one issue at a time. Until that issue is resolved through some decision, agreement, action or choice to postpone action on the issue, nothing else should be discussed. When people focus their attention on one issue, they can deal with it more quickly.

Meetings can be derailed by distractions. When attendant bring up issues willy-nilly, go off on tangents, carry on side discussions and otherwise try to pursue multiple issues, they undermining their own interest in completing the meeting with good results. Keep your meetings on track by calling people back to the one issue that is before the group now.

ONCE PER MEETING

In any meeting (or day of long meetings) an issue should only be discussed once. Discuss it fully, do what you need to do and move on. If an issue truly cant be settled and the group decides to move on to other topics, do not discuss the topic again in the same meeting; the decision to move on means the issue is settled for the purposes of the current meeting. Pair this concept with one thing at a time to bring the focus back to the current issue.

Revisiting old, and still unsettled, matters can seriously bog down a meeting. When people continually rehash and issue, they lose out on the progress they might make on other issues. Remind the group that there are other important issues to discuss in this meeting and the old issue can be discussed again at some other time.

ONE PERSON AT A TIME

Large deliberative assemblies could not possibly get things done if everyone spoke at once. Smaller groups can also suffer confusion, disorder, circular discussions, loss of information, hurt feelings and other sources of ineffectiveness when people talk over each other. Avoid these bad effects by ensuring everyone speaks one at a time.

When people speak one at a time, they have the opportunity to have their full say. It is courteous to listen to people without interrupting them and members of your group will appreciate receiving this respect. In addition, others in the meeting will have a better understanding of what is said when they can concentrate their attention on a single speaker. Use this strategy to increase knowledge transfer, clarity and respect.

Though perceived at times as just a set of rules, parliamentary procedure is built on concepts that lead to more effective and efficient meetings. Whether you are leading a large formal assembly or a small informal group of coworkers, use the three ones to improve the orderliness, effectiveness and speed of your meetings.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 8:20 am and is filed under Leadership, Management, Hiring, Ideas, Tips, Blog Carnival. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.