I need advice on dealing with a group of people. Average citizens, neighbors, who are concerned about a relatively complex issue. Details aren’t important. We hold meetings on this issue and I have found that we all have lots of “facts”, Google is not our friend here, but we don’t have any experience in this issue. Since none of us are experts, we don’t have the experience to make good use of the information we acquire. Consequently, everyone runs on and on with their set of facts and the extrapolations they make based on their particular set of facts, and and the group can’t focus on any one aspect of the issue. Since we can’t all focus on one aspect at a time, we distract each other and can’t get anything accomplished. Whenever we meet, someone has something interesting they just learned and they share that with the group-and everyone else comes up with their own opinion on that point. It never gets better.
It is frustrating and not only aren’t we making much progress on the main issue, each new point seems to start another conspiracy theory about “they” must be crooked/incompetent or somehow out to sabotage the solution to the issue.
Does anyone have any experience and advice on how to take a bunch of people and get them to go step by step through an issue? I have to get everyone to stop collecting more interesting/alarming “facts” and start moving forward on the issue. I am at a loss.
Who is in charge of the group?
If this is difficult to answer or there is no answer at all, maybe suggest an election or appointment for a leader.
Some group organization can go a long way.
Have a chair position who decides the order of the day and who speaks. This could require the chair to 1) find out the summary of what people have to say before the meeting 2) be as impartial as possible while still leading the group in a productive direction.
Taking votes to determine which aspects will be focused on might help.
Tasking subgroups or individuals with specific items may also help.
Perhaps mentioning that trying to abduct* based on often shaky evidence has so far not lead to much progress. Ultimately, What matters more than Why when deciding on your reaction to it. It’s easy to ascribe any number of mental states to other people and that can be quite a rabbit hole but ultimately, it’s the consequences of their behaviors that matter and you have to deal with so that should be the main point of focus.
You may also need a secretary position to take notes, summarize them and collect any evidence.
What they all said. Perhaps the next meeting can be intended to discuss/agree upon rules/procedures/roles.
Robert’s - or agreement on other procedural rules - can be a BIG help.
How are you going to decide anything? By majority vote or consensus?
Setting an agenda and time limits are also useful - as well as publishing minutes, so as not to constantly revisit what was already decided.
Designate small groups to examine specific facets, and have only one representative of that group present the findings.
Assign roles - not only someone to keep order and take minutes, but also to break down the complex issue into more manageable parts.
Also, even if 95% of you agree on a certain approach, how are you going to deal w/ the predictable malcontents and time wasters?
Bottomline, you simply CANNOT have things completely open to allow EACH PERSON to participate in the manner they pref. Someone is going to be pissed - even at the attempt to impose order.
Strategically, if you can identify a couple of other folk who impress you as reasonable, and who share your interest in order and progress, coordinate with them ahead of time, so that when one of you proposes something, another can agree and expound upon it. Don’t just leave it up to chance at the open meeting.
That sentence says it all. You need to bring in an expert, or at least someone familiar with the type of issue you’re group is facing. So long as no one has experience to make good decisions, how can you even know what a good decision is? A more knowledgeable person will be able to guide the group in logical steps through whatever process and action may be required. Until then there is really no reason for anyone to look to another group member as the leader.
Your situation sounds a lot like…jury deliberation. A bunch of non-experts all trying to come to some consensus (or not).
The first thing is that (if you aren’t already) to establish a “leader”. You may be surprized how quickly people follow directions from an established leader, once one is selected/designated, etc… It’s an interesting phenomenon that we somehow get ingrained with (most of us, at least).
As a leader, then, he can establish rules. Like 1) only one topic to be discussed at a time (if people start chatting amongst themselves, call them on it, and ask them to step outside if they want to continue their side discussion. 2) time limits on each topic and enforcing these limits 3) the procedure on how the meeting is to be run.
In your case, it sounds like a flip chart (that you can bring to each meeting) might be useful. List the ideas/proposed solutions/ares to explore/whatever on the chart, and then have the group vote on what they feel is the top one to discuss and investigate further. Voting is a great way to get everyone to focus.
If there are lots of new ideas/options/whatever being brought up, establish a process where 1) they must submit (to the leader) some summary of their idea PRIOR to the meeting, 2) at the start of the meeting, the leader lists out each new idea and then gives each sponsor like 2 minutes to give JUST a summary of the idea/proposal, whatever. Then 3) take a vote for each new idea/option as to whether people feel it is worthwhile to explore further, or rank in order of interest. The ones people feel (vote) are worthwhile then get added to the master list.
Identify two other people in the larger group that you think you can deal with. One opposite from your stance, one non-committal but smart enough to reason with, and you. Then have a separate meeting with this trio and see what you can come up with.
Keep having the same meetings with the larger group to glean ideas from but the purpose of the larger meeting is mostly to keep them occupied while you work on things with the smaller group.
This is essentially how most legislatures get things done, when they actually do get things done.
Or you identify several key topics and split up into focus groups or quality teams or whatever they are called now. In these smaller groups they will ramble along and eventually one person becomes the spokesperson for that topic/group. Have a smaller meeting with these team leaders, and then you might get somewhere.
I am all for democracy, but the intelligence of a group continues to decline with every additional member. Break it down.
Well, there is a person in charge, but it is a volunteer group and people feel free to speak up when they feel the need…
It isn’t that the meetings are discordant, but the issues facts each speaker raises jump from point to point without advancing the discussion. So many facts! So little time.
Did that. One person hauled out the federal regulation covering the issue (drinking water), and another had found a study done in 1980 that made the whole problem so much easier! Too bad the rest of the industry hadn’t discovered this in the last last 35 years. Don’t get me wrong, our expert had forgotten about the federal reg and thanked the audience member for the reference. There is apparently nothing wrong with the old study, it is just the expert said it wasn’t part of the published testing procedures.
Well, we have had expert speakers. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough information-we have too much information. Based on my background, I want to break the issue down to a series of points and apply facts and reasoning to understand each one, moving point by point. In theory, we all want that. But each time someone brings up information regarding a point, that reminds someone else of another fact they read and off we go.
Our knowledgable speakers have not been in charge, they discuss the issue and provide information. If we all focused on jus that information, if we shared a common information base, I think we would do OK. But it isn’t working like that.
I like the idea of a flip chart. Basically it slows down the discussion and forces each person to summarize their thoughts in a few words and put them out for all to see.
Having people submit their ideas/thoughts in advance would be a bridge too far. Our volunteers wouldn’t come to the meetings.
That would be a solution if breaking the group down to teams wouldn’t end up breaking up the group. Volunteers tend to show up to a few meetings and want to talk about the issues, not attend lots of small meetings where they talk to a few people. At least that has been my experience.
I have attended large public meetings where there were several flip charts and the meeting organizers would take each point relating to the issue and assign it to a flip chart. Anyone wanting to discuss that point would go to the chart and start discussing it with others and slapping post-its on the chart. I have never noticed great things coming from such meetings, but at least we addressed the issue and moved on.
