Between the third and
fourth quarter of every year, I seem to get pulled into a lot of meetings where
some executive has decided to assemble a think tank, planning committee,
strategy group, or other impressively-named gaggle of people whom the organizer
expects to do his thinking for him. He
has a desire to achieve something that can’t quite be called a “goal” because
it is too nebulous and ill defined, so he brings together some people to turn
it into some thing actionable. And that
is not necessarily a bad thing, but it seldom turns out well.
My sense is it’s largely
because such groups attract people who want to be perceived as being thought
leaders, but who don’t actually want to think or share their thoughts. Being on a committee makes a person seem
important, and all the more so if it has an impressive name. So in any team/committee of twelve, about
half the people are there just so they can put it on their annual review, but
they contribute nothing at all to the discussion. At best, they’re dead wood who remain
completely silent – though they sometimes speak just so they can say they
contributed something, and it’s usually something useless that detracts or at
least distracts from the purpose of the group.
Others get involved to
prevent progress from occurring. They
consider the group’s activities to be a threat to a status quo with which they
are perfectly happy, and want to prevent the group from proposing any changes
that will rock their pleasure-boat. They bring a spirit of can’t-be-done, are
quick to identify flaws without proposing solutions or alternate approaches,
and it becomes clear that their participation is in the nature of a saboteur
that simply wants to prevent the committee from working. And since it’s much easier to destroy an idea
than create one, must easier to feed doubt than grow enthusiasm, they often get
their way.
Still others vaguely agree
with the purpose, but they have a political agenda: they want to own what the
committee creates. While their
contributions seem to be proposing alternate solutions, it becomes clear that
every solution they propose merely increases their own power and authority by
placing the control of the solution in their own department – whether or not it
makes sense for the process to reside there.
This can be terribly distracting, because good solutions are scuttled in
favor of less effective ones (which are not completely useless) that increase
their political power - and because their interest is in having control rather
than achieving results, it becomes obvious that the plan has little chance of
success.
Similarly, there are those
with alternate agendas that they have either failed to pursue or haven’t
earnestly tried to pursue – but their agendas are similar enough to the
objective of the group that they can divert the group’s discussions to their
agenda. What they are seeking is
usually something worth doing, but it is not the purpose of the group and would
be better handled by creating a separate work group to pursue so that these
side-tracks do not become diversions from the main purpose of the group.
In all, a committee of
twelve people usually has only three or four who are dedicated to the purpose
and willing to contribute in a meaningful way.
And to make matters worse, the behavior of the non-contributors often
alienates and demoralizes contributors to the point where they stop
contributing, or find better things to do with their time. I have noticed that it is difficult, to the
point of being nearly impossible, to recruit smart and capable people to
committees - their aftertastes of their past experience lingers on.
In the end, it’s my sense
that these groups would be more productive if they were pruned down to those
individuals who are earnest and capable.
A group of four intelligent and hard-working people can do more, and do
better, than a committee of twenty people who lack those qualities. But this never seems to be the case: a series
of meetings is set up with the same group of people – the useless and the
detractors are never cast out, the earnest ones leave in disgust, and new
members who could be useful are never added.
But going back to the
premise, groups like this are organized by executives who have only a passing
fancy – they don’t monitor the group, don’t attend meetings, don’t provide
clear guidance, and don’t keep the group focused and on track. As in many things, reward comes from effort –
and when the only “effort” is in suggesting a group should be convened to
discuss an idea, the outcome is much discussion and no progress.
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