Elements of Successful Meetings

There are a couple of general characteristics that all good meetings share. One is that they are short. After about two hours people become stupefied and quit retaining information. A diminishing rate of return is reached that is easy to spot if you watch for it. People get a glassy look in their eyes. Time to adjourn. If the meetings frequently reach that point you start losing membership, or at least the active participation of members. Restructure your meetings, tighten up procedures, strengthen the chair, schedule more frequent meetings, use more committees, whatever you need to do, but don't carry on with long meetings. You'll lose your best people, leaving the decision making and implementation to the dull-witted few who can stand to be bored and have their time wasted.

Sometimes those with extensive activist experience fail to understand how those who're less inclined towards activism (and more interested in the IWW because of its connection to their workplace) are also less inclined towards lengthy meetings where every bit of minutiae are debated ad nauseum.

Good meetings are fairly civil. They are interesting. They have relatively lively participation from most people present. They get a lot of work done. They are efficient and move along quickly. They are well organized. They don't wander off into subjects that don't concern the organization at that time.

The basic tools or parts of a good meeting include an agenda, a chair, often a co-chair, a recording secretary, sometimes a timekeeper, and most importantly a rank & file that knows how to take part in a good meeting. That's the real key. If the rank & file is passive and sheep like then you're just out of luck. You'll never do diddly squat and you may as well go home. If the people in the meeting don't really care about the business at hand, there's nothing you can do short of thinking up some business they do care about, or finding out what they care about and doing that instead. This falls under the heading of agenda. More on that soon. If they just don't know how to do it, but are willing, you're ok. A strong chair can take the helm for a while, and institute a part of the meeting that teaches the meeters how to meet. This is important and needs to take a high priority.

Next Page: Teaching the Meeters to Meet