In the process of analyzing the success or efficacy of a meeting, it’s important to draw a general distinction between what I consider to be the two basic purposes of meetings: 1.) advisory; and 2.) deliberative. It’s arguable that there is a third type: order taking or information exchanging. Since there is no real collaboration going on in those situations, I don’t know why people would bother meeting in the first place. Send an email or put it on the announcement board. The time spent setting up the meeting and waiting for others to arrive probably offsets any benefit gained by hearing that the VP is going to be in Tampa next week anyway.

I consider an advisory meeting a group of people set together to advise a single individual in that individual’s decision making process. For example, you often hear of the President of the United States getting his (someday her) cabinet to obtain advice from the best and the brightest. Once the President hears all of the advice, he or she usually makes a decision.

The purpose of a deliberative meeting is to make a group decision. Continuing our previous example, the President could turn that advisory meeting into a deliberative one by setting the matter to a vote instead of deciding the matter on his own after taking the group’s advice. This is probably closer to what most of us have experienced in our professional meeting modes. I’ll save the methods of deliberation for several subsequent posts, but I want to draw a bright line here between these two purposes of meeting.

It’s important to distinguish further here the purposes (advisory or deliberative) of a meeting from an advisory or deliberative function that is necessary to further the purpose of a meeting. For example, an advisory meeting can deliberate and a meeting set to deliberate can advise other groups or individuals. A prominent example for me is the Olympia Planning Commission. Its purpose is entirely advisory: we don’t actually make any final decisions, but in order to advise the city council we often undertake deliberative functions. The city council for example is not an advisory body. It’s a deliberative council that makes decisions. Similarly, the state legislature is a deliberative body, but its committees often take on advisory functions. The board of directors of a corporation is a deliberative body—it makes the decisions. The CEO’s staff, on the other hand could be either, but I imagine most of them are advisory with the CEO making the final decision.

Why is this distinction important? One of the great failures of any meeting mode is the inability to determine the meeting’s basic purpose. This is difficult for a conscientious leader to undertake because she often desires to avoid the appearance of tyranny by casting the meeting as a deliberative one (i.e. one which all participants have a vote) when in fact she would prefer it to be advisory. Likewise, leaders often subtly use the guise of either purpose to persuade the meeting participants of a certain course of action that she believes most appropriate. (A particular morale-killer is revisiting the decision after the meeting because the leader realizes she didn’t care for the result.)  In either case the meeting is advisory, but to buttress collective morale the leader is wont to admit it. She mistakenly believes that conformity with her ideas can be best achieved by persuading others to the righteousness of her cause through a rigged vote or quasi-consensus. This inhibits the presentation of alternative points of view, foments groupthink, and in the worst instances turns productive employees into pandering lackeys. 

I suggest that leaders widely proclaim the meeting’s purpose at the onset: if the meeting is advisory, let everyone know and expect their support once a decision is made. Should the meeting’s purpose be deliberative, formulate a fair process and encourage preparation and participation. We’ll discuss much more of how to do both later.

If you change nothing else about your meetings, you’ll still see dramatic improvement by implementing a clear distinction between the purposes of your meetings. And if you can’t decide for which purpose your meeting is, try getting some work done instead of holding one.