Working Groups
Before I continue I must apologize for not posting in the last few months. The project I am working on is getting very close to completion, I enrolled in a Masters program and my wife and I ware looking for a new home. I have not been able to allocate much time to blogging.
A working group is an interdisciplinary group of people working together to make a decision or recommendation in regards to a common subject. Sometimes the group has a well defined goal but many times that goal is not defined well however weekly meetings are usually held with presentations and pseudo decisions are made.
I am currently in a working group that is attempting recommend a common architecture in a certain aspect of our business. We meet weekly and make presentations but the overall goal, the question we are trying to answer, has not be defined well. So we end up sitting through presentation after presentation learning about what other members in the group are doing but never really deciding on a common direction nor working together to come to a common solution. Some of the most advance protocols and standards are defined in working groups, so they can work if the group is defined correctly from the beginning.
So, I wanted to take some time to discuss how a working group can avoid this mode of non-decision making. To quote Stephen R. Covey from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People you must “Begin with the End in Mind”. This applies to the individual as well as the group. The group needs to first spend time clearly defining what the group is to accomplish, decide or recommend. As well the group need to define when they know the goal has been met and when to disband the group. Because this discussion defines the future path of the group this initial discussion should be held in a face to face meeting, other future discussions can be held on conference call.
Many groups never start with this simple discussion and these groups often end up embarking on a long, highly ineffective, journey of discussion after discussion and presentation after presentation with no goal and no purpose. Once the group has clearly defined a goal they can move on to execution.
The execution phase starts once the group has defined clearly what is to be accomplished. Rules and roles should be defined now. Each member should be responsible for something significant to reach the goal also each member should have rotating clerical roles like minute taker and agenda writer. Once these roles are defined a brainstorm of topics for discussion can begin. Brainstorming and generation of a short list is a long process which deserves it’s own post (likely coming in the future). Once a short list of topics has been gathered assignments of those topics can be made to group members and presentations can begin. The short list needs to contain topics that are relevant to the end goal, a group does not want to waste time on fringe topics that have no impact on the final decision.
Similarly the presentations to the group should have a purpose, be it to introduce the group to a new topic, to argue pros and cons of a given topic or something else. The presentations need to be complete, concise and correct and the presenter should allow for discussion at the end. After the presentation and discussion are complete the goal of the presentation should have ben met and all members of the group should be committed to the outcome. Once all topics have been presented and discussed the group needs to make the recommendation or decision that it set out to make.
The group now needs to come to a consensus on the decision or recommendation. I feel that this is the most important phase in the entire process and if the process was executed properly this step should be very straight forward. This phase should start with a quick recap of the topics presented and how they relate to the final decision. The group should avoid rehashing past discussions, if more discussion is needed then perhaps the group is not ready for this phase. If a group does not complete this phase then the group has not done what it set out to do, the time spend by all the group members was likely wasted time. Also note that no members should object to the final decisions but they do not have to agree that that is the best path. A presentation or document should be generated to communicate the final decision or recommendation.
Working groups can be a great tool to make good and well informed decisions or recommendations but they can also be a huge waste of time. Working groups should be used with great care in the workplace and a working group should not exist without well defined set of goals and exceptions of it’s members. Each member needs to be committed to making to decision or recommendation that the group was put together to make. The decision should be a consensus decision that no member has an objection to and that each member can be content with.
What are your experiences with working groups? Have you been in a well oiled working group or have you been in one that is a huge time sink?
