
A dense Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) stand in Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Note the absence of other species of trees, and the near-absence of any other plant varieties. They are all kept at bay by the litter of needles on the forest floor. The needles are highly acidic, and the litter is a most inhospitable environment for most other plants. Other trees just can't sprout. Even when they do, they can't get much light.
In some ways, pines are a despotic species. They set the agenda for the land where they reside, and exclude attempts by others to contribute to that agenda. Diversity plummets. This places the ecosystem at risk, because any organism that finds a way to exploit or compete with the pines can severely reduce their population. Unless some other species replaces the pines, the area is vulnerable to weathering and erosion. This is now happening in the western U.S., where the Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is attacking pine forests in what might be the most widespread infestation in the history of the area.
A similar vulnerability can afflict organizations that tolerate Agenda Despots. Their despotic behavior limits diversity of opinion within the portions of the organization where they dominate. Loss of diversity of opinion increases the likelihood of bad decisions.
Photo by J. Schmidt, courtesy U.S. National Park Service.
Incompetent managers abound. They let problems and toxic conflict fester. They provide little clarity of vision, or what is worse, conflicting visions. They favor some subordinates, abuse others, delegate responsibility to the irresponsible, and add load to the overloaded.
They can usually get by from day to day, managing somehow to surf the waves of chaos their incompetence creates. But one venue is especially challenging for these incompetents: the meeting.
In meetings, the people they manage — and supposedly lead — can sometimes raise issues publicly, which can remind everyone of long-standing problems, inconsistencies, and troubles looming inevitably but not yet arrived. To the meeting chair who wants to let sleeping dogs lie, meetings threaten to wake the dogs. And we can't have that.
The techniques of the Agenda Despot give these managers methods for keeping the sleeping dogs asleep and the growling dogs at bay. Here's Part I of a short catalog of techniques Agenda Despots use to control meeting agendas.
- Keep the agenda secret
- One very common technique of agenda control, and perhaps the least sophisticated, is secrecy. Secrecy often prevents all attendee topic contributions, because people assume that the agenda is filled and no time remains for any topics that might otherwise be addressed. Secrecy also limits the ability of attendees to prepare for the meeting, which provides the meeting leader further advantages.
- Don't publish allotted times
- In a well-formed agenda, all topics have time allotments. This enables the timekeeper (often the meeting lead) to determine whether the meeting is on schedule. By failing to publish time allotments, the Agenda Despot gains the freedom to permit expansive discussion of early items, which can consume time that might otherwise be available for later items. Since the time allotments are unpublished, most attendees are unaware when the meeting is running late. If the Agenda Despot views some of the later items unfavorably, they can be excluded from the meeting because "we ran out of time." In some cases, the Agenda Despot will have asked someone to prepare a presentation for one of these later items, all the while planning to run out of time. In this way, the Agenda Despot can intentionally The behavior of Agenda Despots
increases the likelihood
of bad decisionsburden the presenter, which limits the presenter's opportunities to attend to other responsibilities. - Engage in agenda conspiracy
- An agenda conspiracy is a collaboration among a subset of meeting attendees, usually including the meeting lead, with a goal of developing the meeting agenda before anyone else can suggest topics. One common approach involves packing the agenda so full that there is little time left to allocate to topics suggested by anyone other than the conspirators.
Next time we'll explore more techniques for managing topic contributions from attendees. Next in this series Top
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
Meta-Debate at Work
- Workplace discussions sometimes take the form of informal debate, in which parties who initially have
different perspectives try to arrive at a shared perspective. Meta-debate is one way things can go wrong.
Preventing Sidebars
- Sidebar conversations between meeting participants waste time and reduce meeting effectiveness. How
can we prevent them?
Costs of the Catch-Me-Up Anti-Pattern: I
- Your meetings start on time, but some people are habitually late. When they arrive, they ask, "What
did I miss? Catch me up." This is an expensive way to do business. How expensive is it?
Guidelines for Curmudgeon Teams
- The curmudgeon team is a subgroup of a larger team. Their job is to strengthen the team's conclusions
and results by raising thorny issues that cause the team to reconsider the path it's about to take.
In this way they help the team avoid dead ends and disasters.
Workplace Politics and Social Exclusion: I
- In the workplace, social exclusion is the practice of systematically excluding someone from activities
in which they would otherwise be invited to participate. When used in workplace politics, it's ruinous
for the person excluded, and expensive to the organization.
See also Effective Meetings and Conflict Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming June 7: Toxic Disrupters: Tactics
- Some people tend to disrupt meetings. Their motives vary, but they use techniques drawn from a limited collection. Examples: they violate norms, demand attention, mess with the agenda, and sow distrust. Response begins with recognizing their tactics. Available here and by RSS on June 7.
And on June 14: Pseudo-Collaborations
- Most workplace collaborations produce results of value. But some collaborations — pseudo-collaborations — are inherently incapable of producing value, due to performance management systems, or lack of authority, or lack of access to information. Available here and by RSS on June 14.
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