7. "We meet to decide, not to discuss" - most of the time
Effective meetings can have very different forms and purposes. Don't confuse them.
Jenny and I are just back from a super weekend on south Tyneside with our friends Michael and Marisa Dickson. Michael heads up his successful family business Dicksons (what else?), a butchery, bakery and candlestick makery pie & deli product manufacturer and retailer with a strong presence in the North East of England. Founded by his father in 1953, the business has 30 retail shops, an online business and also makes products for other retail chains. You’ll find local specialities like pease pudding and saveloy dip. I highly recommend their steak pie – the half-time choice of the ‘Toon Army’ at Newcastle United’s football ground.
We fell to talking about the delights and frustrations of running a business over an Italian meal on Friday night. Michael brought out a saying which brought me and Jenny up short.
“We meet to decide, not to discuss.”
Michael attributed this pithy aphorism to Haydn Biddle, their ‘appropriately challenging and valued’ Non-Executive director. Haydn is a very experienced businessman, Chairman of George Bateman & Son Ltd (the UK’s largest family-owned pub chain and brewer, now in its fourth generation) and immediate past Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lincoln. He followed it up by saying that if people read the papers issued before the meeting, they should be able to come along ready to decide on the issues presented; whether to take on a new shop, buy a new machine for the factory, launch a new product line, or whatever.
Decisions about nuclear safety
This is a very clear stance indeed. It took me back to my time in the nuclear energy industry in the late 1980s. As a young and rising physicist at Berkeley Nuclear Power Station in Gloucestershire, one of my roles was co-ordinating nuclear safety related paperwork and permissions. You will not be surprised to hear that nuclear safety was (and still is) is the number one priority. Any changes which might affect nuclear safety had to be scrutinised and approved by committees at different levels. Minor modifications could be approved on site, more significant alterations had to be passed by off-site experts within the organisation, while the most significant went to a special committee including experts from other organisations like the UK Atomic Energy Authority and finally the independent nuclear regulator.
The rule was quite simple: approval had to be unanimous. My role was passing papers on to the various experts, getting their reactions and ensuring that the papers were adjusted if necessary to a point where they could be agreed. This was all done with a backdrop of wanting to keep expenditure down and time tight if possible – delays cost money. Occasionally we had to pull a paper if there were issues which couldn’t be settled by the meeting date, and bring it back in revised form next time.
When Berkeley became the first UK nuclear power station to cease generating electricity in 1989 (non-economic rather than safety concerns), I was asked to set up a parallel safety scrutiny process for decommissioning, where I was also the Technical Secretary of two committees. (I not only choreographed all the papers and made sure everything was in order, but also wrote the minutes and advised the Chair.) This was the same as before but on steroids. We had to get things through with unanimous approval, and as I was running the process I was in the firing line if anything went amiss.
Work with it, don’t railroad
The experts examining the papers were very clever people indeed, some of them with not enough to occupy them. So the comments tended to be an alarming mixture of the insignificant (“comprise is a transitive verb, so the phrase ‘comprises of’ on page 4 is incorrect” was one I recall with particular vividness) and the hugely important (for example, consequences of a piece of plant failing which had not been fully foreseen). Mostly we could adjust the papers or carry out further analysis in advance which mollified them. The thing to be avoided at all costs was an objection we hadn’t heard or foreseen being made on the day, which results in a humiliating (but still very safe) withdrawal and resubmission of a better version next time.
Sometimes the experts wanted to make a point in the meeting about something they thought was important, so their concern would be minuted (even though we had covered it). When I got wind that this was likely I had to brief the Chair that the ‘objection’ was a formality and we could safely say it was addressed. If the Chair started to lost his nerve and get worried that we hadn’t dealt with it, he might ask for further thoughts from others who, being very clever and underutilised, were only too pleased to chip in with more prognostications, risking the paper being withdrawn. I am afraid that my body language sometimes got the better of me, banging my head on the table as the argument got away from us. 😊
The power of unanimity
This is one way to make decisions, and it’s a very good one where there is a lot at stake (including nuclear safety). The point, of course, was to ensure collective responsibility. All parties have looked at it, everyone has agreed in the end, and if something has been missed then we should all have seen it. I suspect this angle is the same at Dickson’s, where they meet to ‘decide not discuss’.
This experience was also very valuable throughout my career. Things are SOOO much easier when the agreement is unanimous, even if it takes some ground work to get there with proposals being revised and adjusted for the better. Perhaps because of it, I am not much in favour of voting at decision points. 51/49 votes (or even 52/48 votes) don’t really resolve anything, particularly if the ‘winners’ then ignore the losers’ concerns and viewpoint. It’s much better to work towards full or at least overwhelming agreement.
There is a connection here with the Sociocracy movement (now in its latest iteration Sociocracy 3.0) for organising (using circles and influence rather than hard power) and its recent cousin Holacracy. The methods seek to produce better governance by working towards consent, which is different to consensus. Where consensus means everyone agrees, consent means that nobody objects. This is a lower bar, so even if some don’t like the decision, they say they can live with it. Dissent is openly sought, objections valued, and differences are worked through openly with the idea that the final decision will be better. Strong echoes here for me of the nuclear industry!
When discussion can be more useful than agreement
At the start of this piece I said that meeting to decide, not discuss was a good idea – most of the time. So when are the exceptions? Sometimes the purpose of the conversation can be the hope of generating new possibilities. These new possibilities are not just tweaks to existing ideas, they may be whole new ways to do things (and indeed new things to do). In the ‘decision’ model above there can be some development of ideas beforehand, as proposals are tweaked. But how about something more profound?
Solutions Focus is, among other things, one way of doing Dialogic Organisational Development. In this way of tackling challenging situations, the conversations are not simply weighing up facts, they are about creating and building new possibilities unseen (or even non-existent) before. It’s not so much about either-or as what-if and what-then. One phrase can spark others, as new ideas emerge and new connections and alliances come into view.
This is a very different kind of conversation. It is much more about open wondering, speculating, imagining and building than about coming rapidly to conclusions. People will be wary of offering an idea out loud if they think it might be either acted on immediately or (more likely) shot down in flames. Taking time in exploring, elaborating, coming at things from different angles – these things all take time.
In terms of organising humanely and effectively, I find it’s best to clearly separate these creative conversations from the ‘decision’ conversations. Both need skill to run well. And if you confuse one with the other, things will rapidly become muddled, people get perplexed, impatience turns to rage, cross-purposes abound.
If you try to mix the two forms of conversation, the result in my experience is usually confusion and frustration. If some think we’re trying to reach a decision and others are attempting to explore creatively, no-one will be satisfied. And of course this is why the latter are usually much less frequent and are often held off site in some other space which mark them as different kinds of events with different ‘rules’ and different expectations.
Making difficult decisions easier
I acknowledge that some decisions are hard. Here are a few ideas to make them easier to handle and make progress.
Get people onside early – I always like to be in touch with key stakeholders in good time to hear what they were thinking, reassure them, take useful ideas on board and make sure they felt their concerns were being addressed. In the nuclear industry the key stakeholders were ‘everyone’ which is a good starting point.
Make it smaller – how can we move ahead but in smaller steps? This is a classic Solutions Focus move. It puts less at stake, offers the chance for quick feedback and adjusting the trajectory later on. Indeed, the whole Agile methodology is based on this way of thinking.
Take it at the last responsible moment – do we really need to do this now? Note that the ‘last responsible moment’ is not at all the same as the last moment! I have come across managers whose desire for clarity and certainty leads them to take decisions too early, which are then frustrated by events and developments. And no, this is NOT a charter for procrastination.
Make it temporary – rather than do this for ever, can we do it for a trial period and then review? I learned this from leading volunteer organisations like Sunday Assembly. Rather than ask for people to take on some task, invite them to do it this month. Or for three months and see how it goes. People are much more inclined to accept something if they can see an end point and not feel it’s theirs for ever.
You can find about these (and indeed another seven options) in my paper Better Decision Making With Solution Focused Coaching from InterAction (free download). If you’ve enjoyed this piece please like it below and so leave a comment or ask a question.
Dates and mates
I am leading a rare four-week online Hosting Generative Change course on Tuesdays starting 21st March 2023 with my good friends from Connexxo. It’s all about how to bring people together for the second kind of conversation, getting to something new instead of the same-old-same-old. Full details and registration here. The course is based on my book Hosting Generative Change (of course!).
If you’d fancy trying a Dicksons pie or other product, they deliver nationwide in the UK. Click here to see the range of meat boxes and other goodies. We’re big fans of the sausages too.
"If some think we’re trying to reach a decision and others are attempting to explore creatively, no-one will be satisfied."
This is very, very important for me. And where 'invitations' can really make the difference. If it's clear to everyone the purpose of our gathering, disappointment and frustration are low.
And, of course, I'm also a big supporter of the Consent Decision Making process: it's fundamental to create a psycological safe environment in which radical honesty is a true value.