Monday, October 19, 2015

A Confederacy of Dunces

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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