Inspired by: Dr. Nader Vadiee
I was laying in bed waking up, my mind wandering as my eyes were opening. I was reflecting upon the Advisory Committee regarding the stated needs and that one industrial partner vocally dominated the committee.
A committee member pulled me aside after the meeting to voice their strong support for the teaching of an area that the vocal committee member opposed. His drive to communicate this with me was strong. He was very vocal one-on-one but never said anything during the meeting.
In retrospect, I'm thinking of the many meetings and there seems to be a trend.
I believe there is an unspoken code of etiquette that prevents many people from contradicting anyone in public, or in front of others such as meetings.
To meet the needs of individuals and to recognize their customs, I suggest attempting a restructuring of traditional meeting etiquette to allow for individual contributions to be presented and recorded. The following allows for every topic of every meeting to have individual one-on-one conversations (similar to lobbying in our government). Though described in detail, implementation should be quite simple.
The proposed meeting structure allows for individuals to contribute written relationships rather than the meeting Secretary having to collect all such information. The structure allows for parallel written efforts, rather than sequential. The structure also allows for each individual to express themselves even if another member has an opposing opinion.
Development Meeting Structure
Value Added Development via Individual Expression Etiquette
(VADIEE)
Setup two adjacent conference rooms (lobby with drinks/snacks and conference room)
In the conference room:
- Provide everyone with a notepad and pen
- State that it is intended that the notepads with the information will be picked up at the end of the committee session for collation and correlation
- Please print legibly and write complete thoughts
Create name tags for all committee members - 1 Dr. Nader Vadiee
- 2 James Dunn
- 3 Joe Smith
- 4 Julie Jones
- 5 ...
Initially state the purpose/agenda Hand out a sheet that lists all the topics on the agenda
As each member talks to another member they check their number off their list - Topic 1: Skills needed by local industry
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
- Topic 2: Internship developments
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
- Topic 3: ...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Give a summary of how the meeting is to be conducted: - Topic presented
- Discussed as a group for 10 minutes or less
- Adjourn for a series of 2 minute mini-meetings amongst individuals
- The Assistant rings a bell every 2 minutes to signal the rotation
- Be sure to write the topic, or topic number, before writing notes related to the topic so information can be collated later
- topic
- major points of contention
- potential solutions
- relationships for consideration
- Reconvene
- Ask for any new revelations and record them
- Create Action Items
- Go to the next topic and repeat the above procedure
Begin Meeting Discussions:
- Present the results of past topics / old business
- Review of Action Item log
- Get the status of Action Items still outstanding
- Collect completed Action Item worksheets
- Present one topic of new business
- Explore the topic as a group for 10 minutes or less
- Stop the exploration and go to the open snack room (lobby)
- The Assistant rings a bell every 2 minutes
- Everyone uses the topics list to rotate through a series of 2 minute or less mini-meetings
- I'm J.... and my concerns are...
- List major points
- List potential solutions
- Relationships for consideration
With a notepad, rotate through each member and discuss their thoughts individually on the topic for 2 minutes each Make notations for new group related questions Return to the conference room - Ask the group any questions resulting from individual conferences
- Ask the group to share any new revelations not part of their notes
- Propose Action Items
- Assign Action Item worksheets
- Enter worksheet information into Action Item log
Begin discussion of the next topic and repeat the above
- Determine when the next meeting will be held
- After the Committee meeting:
- Collect all notepads
- Have Assistant type up each topic, with bullet list of all subsequent thoughts and presented solutions collated from all notepads
- Review all notes for relationships the Assistant potentially missed
- Send the Topic based Bullet List electronically to all committee members
- Send a copy of the Action Item log to all committee members
- Check on individual Action Item status periodically
