Would Anyone Object?

Would anyone object? It's an innocent question that might be posed by a team member who's acting in a role that serves the rest of the team in some way. Example: "Would anyone object if we move the Backlog Review Meeting to 1100 on Thursdays?" Perhaps the role in question is Secretary, or Host Site rep, or Scribe, or meeting planner, or ScrumMaster, or project manager, or speaker committee chair. To people in these roles, asking for objections before making a decision seems like a convenient way to ensure acceptable levels of decision quality in a timely fashion. It avoids convening a meeting, with all the hassle and delay that accompanies meetings.

Convenient and quick it may be, but there are risks. Many of those risks trace to one root cause: constraining the time spent in open discussion.

The risks of asking only for objections

To exhibit these risks clearly, one need only compare the would-anyone-object process, conducted through chats or email, to the lets-discuss-it-in-a-meeting process. In what follows, I refer to the team member who posed the question as Quentin (Q for Question). And I assume that the meeting would be a meeting or videoconference of the individuals Quentin queried, in which the attendees conduct an open discussion.

Risk of abusing delegated authority

In an open discussion in a meeting, all attendees can see each other and hear each other's responses to Quentin's question. When Quentin poses the question in a chat or email, the people queried might not have access to each other's responses. If some people respond only to Quentin, he's free to count their responses as he chooses. That would be an outrageous abuse of authority, of course, but it could happen. More likely, but still problematic, are errors Quentin might make in processing the responses.

Risk of overlooking important factors

When Asking for objections before making a
decision might seem like a convenient
way to ensure acceptable levels of
decision quality, but it comes
with some significant risksQuentin asks for objections only, respondents might not provide other pertinent information that could affect the decision. For example, suppose Kelly knows that an audit that has been underway will finish on Thursday, making unnecessary consideration of the matter at hand. Kelly might not mention this, because it isn't an objection. In a meeting, on the other hand, an open discussion might be more likely to surface such information.

Risk of working with misinformation

Similar to the risk of overlooking important factors is the risk of working with misinformation — information that's outdated, incomplete, or just plain wrong. In an open discussion in a meeting, intentional efforts to vet all assumptions and contributions can mitigate this risk. For example, someone might object on the basis of outdated information. In a meeting, other attendees can question the basis of the objection, and that can reveal the error. Asking for objections in a chat or email is much less likely to provide such mitigation.

Risk of overlooking important constituents

If all individuals affected by the decision are included in the group from whom Quentin seeks objections, then the risk of overlooking constituents might be no greater for Quentin's approach than it would be for a meeting. But if there are many other affected individuals, Quentin's approach has a high risk of missing the objections of people not included in his query. And this point would likely surface (read: "should be surfaced") in a meeting.

Risk of communication gaps

When we rely on asking for objections in a chat or email, communication gaps can appear in a variety of forms:

• Intended recipients might not receive Quentin's query
• The query might have been sent to people who should not have been queried
• The recipient might misunderstand the query
• The recipient might choose not to respond
• The recipient might forget to respond
• Quentin might not receive the recipient's response
• Quentin might not understand the recipient's response
• …and many more

A face-to-face meeting is likely to experience these difficulties at a much lower rate. Even if they do occur in a meeting, they're more evident to everyone and more easily resolved. The same is true, to a lesser extent, for virtual meetings.

Last words

If you've read to this point, you might have noticed an unstated assumption underlying this risk catalog. That unstated assumption is that Quentin earnestly wants to know whether or not there are objections. He wants to ensure that the decision he makes is a good one. But there are other much less benign possibilities.

Quentin might want to suppress open discussion. The would-anyone-object process actually suppresses discussion, which reduces the probability of new information coming to light. Reducing the probability of discovering issues enhances the probability that the decision process will produce the outcome Quentin is proposing. Anyone intent on producing the outcome they favor would thus find the would-anyone-object process appealing. It's an effective tool for controlling group decision-making, and when used for that purpose, it's ethically questionable.  Top    Next Issue

Do you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Effective Meetings:

Think Before You PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a useful tool. Many of us use it daily to create presentations that guide meetings or focus discussions. Like all tools, it can be abused — it can be a substitute for constructive dialog, and even for thought. What can we do about PowerPoint abuse?

How We Avoid Making Decisions

When an important item remains on our To-Do list for a long time, it's possible that we've found ways to avoid facing it. Some of the ways we do this are so clever that we may be unaware of them. Here's a collection of techniques we use to avoid engaging difficult problems.

Rationalizing Creativity at Work: I

Much of the work of modern organizations requires creative thinking. But financial and schedule pressures can cause us to adopt processes that unexpectedly and paradoxically suppress creativity, thereby increasing costs and stretching schedules. What are the properties of effective approaches?

Virtual Brainstorming: I

When we need to brainstorm, meeting virtually carries a risk that our results might be problematic. Here's Part I of some steps to take to reduce the risk.

How to Hijack Meetings

Recognizing the tactics meeting hijackers use is the first step to reducing the incidence of this abuse. Here are some of those tactics.

See also Effective Meetings and Workplace Politics for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming July 3: Additive bias…or Not: II

Additive bias is a cognitive bias that many believe contributes to bloat of commercial products. When we change products to make them more capable, additive bias might not play a role, because economic considerations sometimes favor additive approaches. Available here and by RSS on July 3.

And on July 10: On Delegating Accountability: I

As the saying goes, "You can't delegate your own accountability." Despite wide knowledge of this aphorism, people try it from time to time, especially when overcome by the temptation of a high-risk decision. What can you delegate, and how can you do it? Available here and by RSS on July 10.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrendPtoGuFOkTSMQOzxner@ChacEgGqaylUnkmwIkkwoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info