How T o Run a Meeting
by Antony Jay
Reprint 76204
Harvard Business
Review
HBR
MARCH–APRIL1976 How To Run a Meeting
Antony Jay
W hy have a meeting anyway?Why indeed?
A great many important matters are quite
satisfactorily conducted by a single indi-vidual who consults nobody.A great many more are resolved by a letter,a memo,a phone call,or a simple conversation between two people.Sometimes five minutes spent with six people parately is more effective and productive than a half-hour meeting with them all together.
Certainly a great many meetings waste a great deal of everyone’s time and em to be held for historical rather than practical reasons;many long-established committees are little more than memorials to dead problems.It would probably save no end of manage-rial time if every committee had to discuss its own dissolution once a year,and put up a ca if it felt it should continue for another twelve months.If this requirement did nothing el,it would at least re-focus the minds of the committee members on their purpos and objectives.
But having said that,and granting that“referring the matter to a committee”can be a device for dilut-ing authority,diffusing responsibility,and delaying decisions,I cannot deny that meetings fulfill a deep human need.Man is a social species.In every organi-zation and every human culture of which we have record,people come together in small groups at regu-lar and frequent intervals,and in larger“tribal”gath-erings from time to time.If there are no meetings in the places where they work,people’s attachment to the organizations they work for will be small,and they will meet in regula
l2tpr formal or informal gather-ings in associations,societies,teams,clubs,or pubs when work is over.
This need for meetings is clearly something more positive than just a legacy from our primitive hunting past.From time to time,some technomaniac or other comes up with a vision of the executive who never leaves his home,who controls his whole operation from an all-electronic,multichannel,microwave,fi-ber-optic video display dream console in his living room.But any manager who has ever had to make an organization work greets this vision with a smile that soon stretches into a yawn.
keep up withThere is a world of science fiction,and a world of human reality;and tho who live in the world of human reality know that it is held together by face-to-face meetings.A meeting still performs functions that will never be taken over by telephones,teleprint-ers,Xerox copiers,tape recorders,television moni-tors,or any other technological instruments of the information revolution.
Mr.Jay is chairman of Video Arts Ltd.,a London-bad producer of training films for industry.Currently,the com-pany is producing a film(featuring John Clee of Monty Python)on the subject of meetings,and this article springs from the rearch Mr.Jay did for that project.He has also written many TV documentaries,such as Royal Family, and authored veral books,including Management& Machiavelli(Holt,Rinehart&Winston,1968).
商务时间FUNCTIONS OF A MEETING
At this point,it may help us understand the meaning of meetings if we look at the six main functions that meetings will always perform better than any of the more recent communication devices.
1In the simplest and most basic way,a meeting defines the team,the group,or the unit.Tho pre-nt belong to it;tho abnt do not.Everyone is able to look around and perceive the whole group and n the collective identity of which he or she forms a part.We all know who we are—whether we are on the board of Universal International,in the overas sales department of Flexitube,Inc.,a member of the school management committee,on the East Hamp-ton football team,or in Section No.2of Platoon4, Company B.drug
2A meeting is the place where the group revis, updates,and adds to what it knows as a group.Every group creates its own pool of shared knowledge,ex-perience,judgment,and folklore.But the pool con-sists only of what the individuals have experienced or discusd as a group—i.e., tho things which every individual knows that all the others know,too. This pool not only helps all members to do their jobs more intelligently,but it also greatly increas the speed and efficiency of all communications among them.The group knows that all special nuances and wider implications in a b
rief statement will be imme-diately clear to its members.An enormous amount of material can be left unsaid that would have to be made explicit to an outsider.
But this pool needs constant refreshing and replen-ishing,and occasionally the removal of impunities. So the simple business of exchanging information and ideas that members have acquired parately or in smaller groups since the last meeting is an impor-tant contribution to the strength of the group.By questioning and commenting on new contributions, the group performs an important“digestive”process that extracts what’s valuable and discards the rest. Some ethologists call this capacity to share knowl-edge and experience among a group“the social mind,”conceiving it as a single mind disperd among a number of skulls.They recognize that this “social mind”has a special creative power,too.A group of people meeting together can often produce better ideas,plans,and decisions than can a single individual,or a number of individuals,each working alone.The meeting can of cour also produce wor outputs or none at all,if it is a bad meeting. However,when the combined experience,knowl-edge,judgment,authority,and imagination of a half dozen people are brought to bear on issues,a great many plans and decisions are improved and some-times transformed.The original idea that one person might have come up with singly is tested,amplified, refined,and shaped by argument and discussion (which often acts on people as so
me sort of chemical stimulant to better performance),until it satisfies far more requirements and overcomes many more objec-tions than it could in its original form.
3A meeting helps every individual understand both the collective aim of the group and the way in which his own and everyone el’s work can contrib-ute to the group’s success.
4A meeting creates in all prent a commitment to the decisions it makes and the objectives it pur-sues.Once something has been decided,even if you originally argued against it,your membership in the group entails an obligation to accept the decision. The alternative is to leave the group,but in practice this is very rarely a dilemma of significance.Real opposition to decisions within organizations usually consists of one part disagreement with the decision to nine parts rentment at not being consulted be-fore the decision.For most people on most issues,it is enough to know that their views were heard and considered.They may regret that they were not fol-lowed, but they accept the outcome.
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And just as the decision of any team is binding on all the members,so the decisions of a meeting of people higher up in an organization carry a greater authority than any decision by a single executive.It is much harder to challenge a decision of the board than of the chief executive acting on
his own.The decision-making authority of a meeting is of special importance for long-term policies and procedures.
5In the world of management,a meeting is very often the only occasion where the team or group actually exists and works as a group,and the only time when the supervisor,manager,or executive is actually perceived as the leader of the team,rather than as the official to whom individuals report.In some jobs the leader does guide his team through his personal prence—not just the leader of a pit gang or construction team,but also the chef in the hotel kitchen and the maitre d’hôtel in the restaurant,or the supervisor in a department store.But in large administrative headquarters,the daily or weekly meeting is often the only time when the leader is ever perceived to be guiding a team rather than doing a job.
烘托6A meeting is a status arena.It is no good to pretend that people are not or should not be con-cerned with their status relative to the other mem-bers in a group.It is just another part of human nature that we have to live with.It is a not insignificant fact that the word order means(a)hierarchy or pecking order;(b)an instruction or command;and(c)stability and the way things ought to be,as in“put your affairs
in order,”or“law and order.”All three definitions are aspects of the same idea,which is indivisible. Since a meeting is so often the only time when members get the chance to find out their relative standing,the“arena”function is inevitable. When a group is new,has a new leader,or is compod of people like department heads who are in competition for promotion and who do not work in a single team outside the meeting,“arena behavior”is likely to figure more largely,even to the point of dominating the proceedings.However,it will hardly signify with a long-established group that meets regularly. Despite the fact that a meeting can perform all of the foregoing main functions,there is no guarantee that it will do so in any given situation.It is all too possible that any single meeting may be a waste of time,an irritant,or a barrier to the achievement of the organization’s objectives.
WHAT SORT OF MEETING?
noticeableWhile my purpo in this article is to show the critical points at which most meetings go wrong,and to indicate ways of putting them right,I must first draw some important distinctions in the size and type of meetings that we are dealing with.
Meetings can be graded by size into three broad categories:(1)the asmbly—100or more people who are expected to do little more than listen to the main speaker or speakers;(2)the council—40 or5
0people who are basically there to listen to the main speaker or speakers but who can come in with questions or comments and who may be asked to contribute some-thing on their own account;and(3)the commit-tee—up to10(or at the most12)people,all of whom more or less speak on an equal footing under the guidance and control of a chairman.
We are concerned in this article only with the “committee”meeting though it may be described as a committee,a subcommittee,a study group,a project team,a working party,a board,or by any of dozens of other titles.It is by far the most common meeting all over the world,and can perhaps be traced back to the primitive hunting band through which our species evolved.Beyond doubt it constitutes the bulk of the11 million meetings that—so it has been calculated—take place every day in the United States. Apart from the distinction of size,there are certain considerations regarding the type of meeting that profoundly affect its nature. For instance: Frequency—A daily meeting is different from a weekly one,and a weekly meeting from a monthly one.Irregular,ad hoc,quarterly,and annual meetings are different again.On the whole,the frequency of meetings defines—or perhaps even determines—the degree of unity of the group.
Composition—Do the members work together on the same project,such as the nursing and ancillary staff on the same ward of a hospital?Do they work on different but parallel tasks,like a meeting of the
company’s plant managers or regional sales manag-ers?Or are they a diver group—strangers to each other,perhaps—united only by the meeting itlf and by a common interest in realizing its objectives? Motivation—Do the members have a common objec-tive in their work,like a football team?Or do they to some extent have a competitive working relation-ship, like managers of subsidiary companies at a meeting with the chief executive,or the heads of rearch,production,and marketing discussing fi-nance allocation for the coming year?Or does the desire for success through the meeting itlf unify them,like a neighborhood action group or a new product design committee?
Decision process—How does the meeting group ulti-mately reach its decisions?By a general connsus,“the feeling of the meeting”?By a majority vote?Or are the decisions left entirely to the chairman him-lf,after he has listened to the facts,opinions, Kinds of meetings
The experienced meeting-goer will recognize that, although there em to be five quite different meth-ods of analyzing a meeting,in practice there is a tendency for certain kinds of meetings to sort them-lves out into one of three categories.Consider: The daily meeting,where people work together on the same project with a common objective and reach decisions informally by general agreement.
The weekly or monthly meeting,where members work on different but parallel projects and where there is a certain competitive element and a greater likelihood that the chairman will make the final decision himlf.
The irregular,occasional,or“special project”meet-ing,compod of people who normal work does not bring them into contact and who work has little or no relationship to the others’.They are united only by the project the meeting exists to promote and motivated by the desire that the project should suc-ceed.Though actual voting is uncommon,every member effectively has a veto.
Of the three kinds of meetings,it is the first—the workface type—that is probably the most common. It is also,oddly enough,the one most likely to be successful.Operational imperatives usually ensure
that it is brief,and the participants’experience of working side by side ensures that communication is good.
The other two types are a different matter.In the meetings all sorts of human crosscurrents can sweep the discussion off cour,and errors of psychology and technique on the chairman’s part can defeat its purpos.Moreover,the meetings are likely to bring together the more nior people and
内心深处to produce decisions that profoundly affect the efficiency,pros-perity,and even survival of the whole organization. It is,therefore,toward the higher-level meetings that the lessons of this article are primarily directed. BEFORE THE MEETING
The most important question you should ask is:“What is this meeting intended to achieve?”You can ask it in different ways—“What would be the likely conquences of not holding it?”“When it is over, how shall I judge whether it was a success or a failure?”—but unless you have a very clear require-ment from the meeting,there is a grave danger that it will be a waste of everyone’s time.
Defining the objective
You have already looked at the six main functions that all meetings perform,but if you are trying to u a meeting to achieve definite objectives,there are in practice only certain types of objectives it can really achieve.Every item on the agenda can be placed in one of the following four categories,or divided up into ctions that fall into one or more of them.
1Informative-digestive—Obviously,it is a waste of time for the meeting to give out purely factual information that would be better circulated in a docu-ment.But if the information should be heard from a particular person,or if it needs some clarification and comment to make n of it,or if it has
deep impli-cations for the members of the meeting,then it is perfectly proper to introduce an item onto the agenda that requires no conclusion, decision, or action from the meeting,it is enough,simply,that the meeting should receive and discuss a report.
The“informative-digestive”function includes progress reports—to keep the group up to date on the current status of projects it is responsible for or that affect its deliberations—and review of completed projects in order to come to a collective judgment and to e what can be learned from them for the next time.
2Constructive-originative—This“What shall we do?”function embraces all items that require something new to be devid,such as a new policy,a new strategy,a new sales target,a new product,a new marketing plan,a new procedure,and so forth.This sort of discussion asks people to contribute their knowledge,experience,judgment,and ideas.Obvi-ously,the plan will probably be inadequate unless all relevant parties are prent and pitching in.
3Executive responsibilities—This is the“How shall we do it?”function,which comes after it has been decided what the members are going to do;at this point,executive responsibilities for the different components of the task have to be distributed around the table.Whereas in the cond function the c
finally是什么意思>英语儿童歌曲on-tributors’importance is their knowledge and ideas, here their contribution is the responsibility for im-plementing the plan.The fact that they and their subordinates are affected by it makes their contribu-tion especially significant.
It is of cour possible to allocate the executive responsibilities without a meeting,by parate indi-vidual briefings,but veral considerations often make a meeting desirable.
First,it enables the members as a group to find the best way of achieving the objectives.
Second,it enables each member to understand and influence the way in which his own job fits in with the jobs of the others and with the collective task. Third,if the meeting is discussing the implemen-tation of a decision taken at a higher level,curing the group’s connt may be of prime importance.If so,the fact that the group has the opportunity to formulate the detailed action plan itlf may be the decisive factor in curing its agreement,becau in that ca the final decision belongs,as it were,to the group.Everyone is committed to what the group decides and is collectively responsible for the final shape of the project,as well as individually answer-able for his own part in it.Ideally,this sort of agenda item starts with a policy,and ends with an action plan.
4Legislative framework:Above and around all considerations of“What to do”and“How to do it,”there is
a framework—a departmental or divisional organization—and a system of rules,routines,and procedures within and through which all the activity takes place.Changing this framework and introduc-ing a new organization or new procedures can be deeply disturbing to committee members and a threat to their status and long-term curity.Yet leaving it unchanged can stop the organization from adapting to a changing world.At whatever level this change happens,it must have the support of all the perceived leaders who groups are affected by it.
The key leaders for this legislative function must collectively make or confirm the decision;if there is any important disnt,it is very dangerous to clo the discussion and make the decision by decree.The
