Do Business Well

Most of the suggestions offered to the manager/chairperson are aplicable to you as a group member. You just can’t be as directive.

1. First, be a good group member. One positive, helpful person in a meeting can do a lot of good. You can offer process suggestions to your group like “Why don’t we figure out how we are going to deal with this issue before we rush off in different directions?” and move on to the facilitating interventions we have discussed.
2. Rather than confronting your boss or chairperson in front of the group, you could talk to him or her after a meeting, offer some constructive criticism, and suggest that he or she read this. Let the printed page do some of the talking for you.

3. You can wait until a meeting blows up and suggest that it might be worthwhile for your group to spend some time figuring out what just happened and how meetings could be improved. The objective is to get your group to realize its meetings aren’t as effective as they could be. Then, when everyone is arguing about what should be done, you can suggest one of the courses of action listed below.

1. As a first step, you could offer to act as a recorder. Get the group to sit in a semicircle facing sheets of butcher paper. And as the meeting continues in its normal way, quietly create a group memory. Just having a record of the meeting will help your group visualize some of its methodological problems, and the group memory itself will have a beneficial effect.
2. You could suggest bringing in an experienced facilitator to run one of your most important meetings. Point out that it’s worth a try and that people can always throw the facilitator out if things don’t work. Bringing in a neutral third party is always an effective way to introduce positive change into a group. In preparation for that meeting, you can suggest that interested group members read this.
3. If you’re determined to improve the meetings of your group and are willing to take an active role, you could get some training yourself in the Interaction Method. If necessary, you could develop some confidence by facilitating meetings of other groups with whom you feel more comfortable or more in control. Then, after laying the necessary groundwork, you could offer to run the next meeting of your group. Be sure to explain your role as facilitator as well as the role of recorder, group member and manager/chairperson. If you’re willing to make some mistakes as part of the learning process, you will develop the necessary skills quickly, your meetings will improve, and your group will be grateful.

Selling the method in Hierarchical Organizations

In a hierarchical system, the standards and behavior of the top executives have a great effect on the rest of the organization. If they don’t buy into the Interaction Method, if they aren’t willing to have their meetings facilitated, there isn’t much payoff for junior executives to improve the quality of meetings. Sooner or later the chief executive officer must believe in the benefits of improving meetings through the Interaction Method and communicate his or her support to subordinates by doing his own managing in a collaborative and participative way. After all, the goal of our method is more effective collaborative problem-solving and decision-making. If the top people believe in managing autocratically and don’t feel a need to change, they probably will feel threatened by the Interaction Method and reject it strongly.

An organization-wide assessment of needs is one way to create an awareness of the magnitude of the problem and a need to change. It can be a simple questionnaire (based on our diagnostic sheets) asking employees how much time they spend in meetings, why they hold meetings, how effective their meetings are, whether there is a need to improve their meetings, and if so, in what way. The survey should help to personalize the problem, yield specific costs, and locate particular areas for improvement.

It is much easier for an outsider to suggest a new way of doing things than it is for someone in the organization. The outsider is not locked into the existing system and does not have much to lose if the change doesn’t work. Why should you risk your job by telling your boss that he shouldn’t be running meetings? That’s why you bring in a neutral third party—to tell it like it is. The worst thing that can happen to an outsider is to not be invited back.

So if you’re a member of a top management group and you feel your people might be receptive to the Interaction Method, a relatively low-risk strategy is to get an experienced facilitator to demonstrate what it’s all about. Find somebody acceptable to your group, either an external consultant or someone within the organization who has experience in the method.

A good way to start is to have the consultant observe one meeting, catch on to the issues and jargon of your group, and diagnose your most critical meeting problems. After the initial meeting the consultant should give a brief report to the senior manager and help plan the next meeting. If at all possible, design that next session to be a problem-solving or decision- making meeting, not an information sharing one. Pick a problem that is manageable and allow enough time to get into it. It is very important that the first meeting yield a significant improvement over the previous ones. If you plan it right, it almost always will.

Demonstrate that it works

Once the Interaction Method has been demonstrated and there is interest in continuing to test it, the consultant might interview members of your group to find out what each person would do to improve meetings and to answer questions about the method. Then it would be a good idea to retain the facilitator to run the next few meetings so your group can experience the benefits of the Interaction Method under a variety of conditions. At that point, you and your group should be able to decide whether to continue and, if so, how to introduce the new method to other parts of the organization.

Rather than beginning by introducing 6ie Interaction Method into regular staff meetings, you might choose a special setting-a staff retreat, a task force, or a long-range planning Committee. These temporary groups won’t have developed much protocol and structure, and there may be relatively little resistance to trying something new. These situations may also be viewed as less risky by the newcomers. Your organization won’t reap the full benefits until the method has become incorporated in the many meetings held every day. And this can only be accomplished by extensive learning and training. There are a number of ways to get training in the Interaction approach: train yourself, attend a workshop, or be trained in your natural Work group.

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