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"Cruikshank, Jeffrey L"
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Breaking Robert's rules : the new way to run your meeting, build consensus, and get results
Every day in communities across America hundreds of committees, boards, church groups, and social clubs hold meetings where they spend their time engaged in shouting matches and acrimonious debate. Whether they are aware of it or not, the procedures that most such groups rely on to reach decisions were first laid out as Robert's Rules more than 150 years ago by an officer in the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers. Its arcane rituals of parliamentary procedure and majority rule usually produce a victorious majority and a very dissatisfied minority that expects to raise its concerns, again, at the next possible meeting. Breaking Robert's Rules clearly spells out how any group can work together effectively. After briefly explaining the problems created by Robert's Rules, the guide outlines the five key steps toward consensus building, and addresses the specific problems that often get in the way of a group's progress. Appendices include a basic one page \"Handy Guide\" that can be distributed at meetings and a case study demonstrating how the ideas presented in the book can also be applied in a corporate context. Written in a non-technical and engaging style, and containing clear ideas and instructions that anyone can understand and use, this one-of-a-kind guide will prove an essential tool for any group desperate to find ways of making their meetings more effective. In addition, neighborhood associations, ad hoc committees, social clubs, and other informal groups lacking a clear hierarchy will find solid advice on how to move forward without resorting to \"majority rules\" or bickering over who will take leadership positions. Bound to become a classic, Breaking Robert's Rules will change the way you hold meetings forever, paving the way for efficiency, efficacy, and peaceful decision making.
eBook
Juicing demand for an obscure fruit
By teaching consumers how to squeeze juice from oranges, and by providing different kinds of juicers for that purpose, Lasker created a new use for oranges that increased the fruit's consumption per serving in the United States from half an orange to between two and three oranges.
Newspaper Article
How they sell you what you don't understand
Consider Moore's Law - the famous principle of computing that states that the density of transistors on integrated circuits doubles every two years, thereby making all kinds of technological advances possible. According to a study released in September by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, the iPad had the highest consumer-satisfaction scores ever recorded.
Newspaper Article
Why Break Robert’s Rules?
Let’s imagine that you are someone who is called upon to run a meeting and to help a group make a decision. Maybe you face a situation like one of those described in the introduction. Maybe a community program has run into a problem (these tend to generate high emotions). Maybe your company needs to attack an existing challenge in a new way. Or maybe your church is hoping to launch a new community-outreach program and is having trouble getting the new initiative organized. Let’s imagine further that you have some concerns about this upcoming meeting. Maybe you’ve never run a meeting and you’re worried about getting the procedures right. Or maybe you suspect that there is likely to be a controversy at the meeting, and you want to make sure everyone gets a chance to be heard. Or maybe you just don’t want to preside over one of those meetings that turns into an unproductive gabfest—or worse, a rock-throwing session.
Book Chapter
The Importance of Facilitation
As we’ve described in previous chapters, CBA requires careful preparation. That means identifying the right people, assessing the problem accurately, thinking through a work plan and budget, setting up at least a preliminary set of ground rules so that people can start to work together at the table, and then getting the right people to join the effort. Once they’re at the table, roles and responsibilities must be assigned. But this is all “table-setting,” in a sense, for the problem-solving process that is to follow. How do people start talking in a way that builds consensus on a solution, or an agreement? Every consensus-building process is different. Working backward from a number of very successful deliberations, in a broad range of contexts, we can identify eight features of successful consensus-building deliberations. Those eight features (illustrated by a couple of visits to our friends in Blaine) constitute the heart of this chapter. First, let’s look at the tone that should dominate your deliberations—and the mind-set that gives rise to that tone.
Book Chapter
Convening
Anyone can initiate a consensus-building process by raising the idea with the right individual(s) or official(s) in charge. The critical step at the outset is to identify a potential convener—an elected or appointed official or a senior official in the private sector with the formal authority to take action. This person does not need to know very much about CBA in order to play a convening role. At the outset, it is crucial to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using consensus building, rather than relying exclusively on whatever the usual way of making group decisions might be.
Book Chapter
Holding Parties to Their Commitments
The CBA process is complete when the stakeholders return one last time to meet face-to-face to review the comments received when the participants took the penultimate (i.e., “next-to-final”) draft of the agreement out for review. It may be necessary to modify the package one last time to ensure the support of constituents that the participants are supposed to represent. If major changes to the package are made, however, it may be necessary to go through the final step once again.
Book Chapter