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HomeMy WebLinkAboutagenda.apz.19951017 AGE N D A ASPEN PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING October 17, 1995, Tuesday 4:30 P.M. First Floor Meeting Room - Council Chambers City Hall I . COMMENTS Commissioners Planning Staff Public II. MINUTES III. PUBLIC HEARINGS A. GIS Text Amendments, Mary Lackner IV. DISCUSSION A. Tree Removal Program, Parks Department V. ADJOURN MEMORANDUM TO: Aspen Planning and Zoning Commission FROM: Suzanne Wolff, Administrative Assistant RE: Upcoming Agendas DATE: October 17, 1995 November 7 - Regular Meeting Shadow Mountain AH Subdivision/PUD Conceptual Submission, Rezoning, GMQS Exemption, 8040 Greenline Review, & Special Review (ML) Small Lodge Text Amendments (CH/AA) a.nex MEMORANDUM TO: Aspen Planning and Zoning Commission FROM: Mary Lackner, Planner RE: Land Use Code Text Amendments - Geographic Information System (GIS) Updating DATE: October 17, 1995 ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: City and County staff are seeking a land use code text amendment to enact legislation for the updating of the City's GIS system with subdivision applications, building permits, and work within the public right-of-way permits. The text amendments will require applicants to provide plats and plans in a digital format. APPLICANT: Staff initiated code amendment. Staff from the Assessor's Office, Community Development, Data Processing, and Engineering are seeking approval of this code amendment. BACKGROUND: The City of Aspen has a geographic information system of which the majority of physical information was obtained by a May 1991 aerial fly -over. Presently the City does not have a method to update the structure, driveway, and utility layers. The Assessor's Office digitizes new plats into a digital form for incorporation into the parcel layer. This code amendment sets procedures to require digital information in a form acceptable to the City and allows for continual updating of the GIS as development occurs. As the overall GIS database develops and additional staff begin to utilize the system, its use for planning purposes and development analysis will increase significantly. The GIS can be used to create base maps, prepare land use analysis, map development alternatives, identify adjacent property owners, and numerous other applications. By requiring and maintaining current information in the GIS the use applications and quality expands. A mirror code amendment to amended the Pitkin County Land Use Code is concurrently being processed through the County. This will permit updating on a countywide level. STAFF COMMENTS: Land Use Code amendments are subject to Section 24-7-1102 of the Aspen Municipal Code. This provision requires the Commission and Council to consider the following: A. Whether the proposed amendment is in conflict with any applicable portions of this chapter. Response: Staff does not find the proposed amendment to be an conflict with any other portions of this chapter. B. Whether the proposed amendment is consistent with all elements of the Aspen Area Comprehensive Plan. Response: The Aspen Area Community Plan does not address the City/County. Geographic Information System. C. Whether the proposed amendment is compatible with surrounding zone districts and land uses, considering existing land use and neighborhood characteristics. Response: The proposed amendment will change the submission requirements for all new subdivision applications and final plats, building permits, and development occurring within the public right-of-way. There is no physical change to the development that will occur on a property, so there will be no compatibility issues. D. The effect of the proposed amendment on traffic generation and road safety. Response: This proposed legislation does not effect traffic generation or road safety. Submitted information will identify new access roads and driveways to keep the GIS current. E. Whether and the extent to which the proposed amendment would result in demands. on public facilities, and whether and the extent to which the proposed amendment would exceed the capacity of such public facilities, including but not limited to transportation facilities, sewage facilities, water supply, parks, drainage, schools, and emergency medical facilities. Response: The proposed amendment will not increase demand on any. services or public facilities. Should this text amendment not be approved, the City may be required to allocate additional funds to update the GIS to catch up to development changes in the future. F. Whether and the extent to which the proposed amendment would result in significantly adverse impacts on the natural environment. Response: The proposed code amendment will not have any impact on the natural environment. G. Whether the proposed amendment is consistent and compatible with the community character in the City of Aspen. Response: Staff does not relate this code amendment to community 2 character and does not believe this criteria is applicable. H. Whether there have been changed conditions affecting the subject parcel or the surrounding neighborhood which support the proposed amendment. Response: This code amendment does not relate to any specific parcel or neighborhood. It will be applicable to all new subdivision applications and plats, building permits, and work within public rights -of -way in the City. I. Whether the proposed amendment would be in conflict with the public interest, and is in harmony with the purpose and intent of this chapter. Response: This amendment is not in conflict with the public interest or the City of Aspen Municipal Code. EXISTING REGULATIONS: Presently the Aspen Municipal Code requires specific information to be shown on subdivision applications and plats, building permit plans and for permits for work within public rights -of -way. This text amendment is only seeking that this information be submitted in a digital format as well as the existing paper copies. PROPOSED TEXT AMENDMENT: The following sections of the Municipal Code are proposed to be amended: Section 24-7-1004 (D) (1) (a) Subdivision Submission Requirements 4. GIS Data. All subdivision applications shall submit the requirements specified in Section 7-1004 (C) and Section 7-1004(D) in a digital format acceptable to the Community Development Department. Base information shall be obtained from the Community Development Department. Section 24-7-1005(E) Recordation of Final Subdivision Plat Submission Requirement E. Recordation. The subdivision agreement and plat shall be recorded in the office of the Pitkin County clerk and recorder. Failure on the part of the applicant to record the plat within a period of one hundred and eighty (180) days following approval by the city council shall render the plat invalid and reconsideration and approval of the plat by the 3 commission and city council will be required before its acceptance and recording, unless an extension or waiver is granted by city council for a showing of good cause. The subdivision plat shall also be submitted in a digital format acceptable to the Community Development Department, for incorporation into the City/County GIS system. The one hundred and eighty (180) day recordation requirement contained herein shall not apply to the recording of condominium maps, or declarations or any other documents required to be recorded to accomplish a condominiumization in the City of Aspen. Section 24-3-101 Addition of a new Definition Geographic Information System. An organized collection of computer hardware, software, geographic data, and personnel designed to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information. Section 7-106.3.1 Submission Requirement for Building Permit 1. Prior to issuance of any building permits, the location of building footprints and site improvements including sidewalks, easements, property boundary, driveways, utility locations, and related features shall be submitted in a digital format acceptable to the Community Development Department for incorporation into the City/County GIS system. Revised digital data shall be submitted with all change orders. Base information shall be obtained from the Community Development Department. Section 19-90 Development within Public Rights -of -way The applicant shall submit reproducible mylar as -built drawings of sidewalk, utility improvements, driveways, topographical changes, and other work located within public rights -of -way, showing horizontal and vertical locations of buried utilities, including their size, identification, together with any other facilities or features encountered during excavation within the rights - of -way. The as-builts shall be signed and stamped by a registered professional engineer. The as-builts shall also be submitted in a digital format acceptable to the City Engineer for incorporation into the City/County GIS system. 4 SUMMARY: Staff believes the proposed text amendment will improve and expand the City' s GIS system. The public is becoming a primary user of GIS services, and as the education level of staff increases regarding GIS, this information will be used more for planning analysis. The text amendment changes the existing map and plat information be submitted in a digital format in addition to the present paper copies. This information will be required with all new subdivision applications and plats, building permits, and work within the public right-of-way permits. Most engineering, survey, and architectural firms prepare their map and plat information in a digital format that will be compatible with GIS. There are some firms that do not use technology that will provide this digital information, and projects involving a single family residence may get this information in a digital form for under $100, from a variety of sources. More complicated projects, such as involving multiple units or subdivision, would cost several hundred dollars. RECOMMENDATION: The Planning Office recommends and Zoning Commission recommend approval of amendment. Exhibits "A" - Proposed Ordinance 5 that the Planning the proposed code 1995 ORDINANCE NO. Series of 1995 a AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ASPEN, COLORADO, AMENDING SECTION 6-206(C) AND CHAPTER 11 OF THE ASPEN MUNICIPAL CODE TO REQUIRE PERMITS FOR THE REMOVAL AND RELOCATION OF TREES, ESTABLISH A BASIC VALUE FOR TREES, AND ESTABLISH A PENALTY FOR THE UNLAWFUL REMOVAL, RELOCTION OR DESTRUCTION OF TREES WITAOUT A PERMIT. WHEREAS, trees provide important environmental and .aesthetic benefits to the people and guests of the City of Aspen which extend beyond the boundaries of the property on which they grow; and, WHEREAS, trees contribute to real estate values throughout the community; and WHEREAS, trees provide important health benefits to the citizens and guests of the City of Aspen which extend beyond the boundaries of the property on which they grow; and WHEREAS, large trees are a resource which cannot reasonably be fully replaced if injured, damaged or removed; and, WHEREAS, property development and construction activities can result in inj ury or loss of valuable trees in the City of Aspen; and WHEREAS, the Parks Department of the City of Aspen has the expertise and qualified staff to effectively and fairly administer laws to prevent unnecessary damage or destruction of trees. 10 NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ASPEN, COLORADO, THAT: 1 Section 1 Section 13 - 76, of the Municipal Code of the City of Aspen, Colorado, is hereby repealed: Section 2 Section 6-206(C) of the Municipal Code of the City of Aspen, Colorado, is hereby amended to read as follows: permit. C. Procedure. The following procedure shall apply to the issuance of any building 1. Recordation of conditions of development order. Prior to the submission of an application for a building permit, all documents required to be submitted as a condition of the development order for which a building permit is requested, shall be recorded. These documents may include, but shall not be limited to final plats, any improvement agreements, any other agreements, and any deed restrictions which are required by the development order. 2. Submission of application for building permit. a. Submission to chief building official. An application for a building permit shall be submitted to the chief building official. Attached to the application shall be an improvements survey performed within one (1) year of the date of application which the applicant shall certify represents current site conditions and a topographic survey for the property certified by a registered land surveyor. The improvements survey shall include a site plan which conforms to the requirements set forth at section 11-5.2(b)(2) for a tree removal permit. b. Review by planning agency staff. Upon its receipt, the chief building official shall forward the application to the planning agency staff who shall review the application to ensure that the proposed development: j . Complies with the Uniform Building Code; 2. Has obtained any appropriate environmental and utility permits, including but not limited to water, sewage, and tree removal permits; and I. 3. Complies with all relevant, portions of this chapter. C. Certificate of zoning compliance. If the planning agency staff determines the proposed development for which an application for a building permit is sought complies with all applicable requirements .of this chapter, and with the commitments, representations and conditions of the development order, then the chief zoning official shal_issue a certificate of zoning compliance, which certificate must be attached to the application for building permit prior to the issuance of any building permit by the chief building .official. Section 3 The Municipal Code of the City of Aspen, Colorado, is hereby amended by adding article V to chapter 11 which said article shall read as follows: ARTICLE V. TREE REMOVAL PERMITS Sec. 11 - 5.1 Legislative intent and purposes. The city council finds that trees provide important environmental, aesthetic, and health benefits to the residents and guests of the City of Aspen which extend beyond the boundaries of the property upon which trees may grow. The city council further finds that trees enhance the real estate values of property upon which trees grow and neighboring properties. Large trees are a resource which cannot be fully replaced if injured, damaged or removed. Property development and construction activities can result in injury or loss of valuable trees in the City of Aspen. It is the intent of this article to preserve to the fullest extent possible existing trees considered desireable by the Director of Parks as hereinafter set forth. Sec. 11 - 5.2. Removal of trees; permit required; valuation. (a) Applicability of Section and definition. The terms and provisions of this Article shall apply to all private and public real property situated in or subsequently annexed to the corporate limits of the City of Aspen. The term tree shall include, for purposes of this Article, all deciduous trees having a trunk diameter of six (6) inches or more, Querus gambelli (Gambles Oak) with a trunk diameter of 3 inches or more, coniferous trees having a trunk diameter of four (4) inches or more and all coniferous trees having a height of sixteen (16) feet or more. Trunk diameters shall be measured in inches measured as close to 4 1/2 feet above ground as possible. (b) Removal or damage to trees prohibited without permit. (1) It shall be unlawful for any person, without first obtaining a permit as herein provided, to remove or cause to be removed any tree. This section is (2) It shall be unlawful for any person, without first obtaining a permit for tree removal as herein provided, to dig, excavate, turn, compact, or till the soil within the dripline of any tree in such a manner as to cause material damage to the root system of the tree. For purposes of this subsection, the "dripline" of a tree is a cylinder extending from grade level down to a depth of ten feet below grade, having a radius equal to the length of the longest branch of the tree, with the center of the cylinder located at the center of the trunk of the tree. (3) It shall be unlawful for any person in the construction of any structure or other improvement to park or place machinery, automobiles, or structures; or to pile, store or place, soil, excavated material, fill, or any other matter within the dripline of any tree. During construction the building inspector or the Director of Parks, or his designee, may require the erection of suitable barriers around all trees, including trees not included in the definition set forth at subsection (a) above, to be preserved. Roots must be protected from exposure to the elements with a landscape fabric. In addition, during construction, no attachments or wires other than protective guy wires shall be attached to any tree. (4) It shall be unlawful for any person, without first obtaining a permit for tree removal as herein provided, or approval from the Director of Parks of a project site plan, to pave, with any non -porous material, more than ten percent of the area within the dripline of any tree. (5) It shall be unlawful for any person, without first obtaining a permit for tree removal as herein provided, to intentionally top, damage, girdle, or poison any healthy tree. For purposes of this section "topping" a tree is the removal of more than ten percent of the height from the top of any deciduous tree or the removal of the terminal bud from a coniferous tree. The terminal bud of a coniferous tree is the highest bud on the tree. (6) It shall be unlawful for any person, without first obtaining a permit as herein provided, to relocate any tree. If a relocated tree dies within two years of relocation and is not replaced with a tree of equal value, the death of the relocated tree shall be deemed an unpermitted tree removal. This section shall not apply to the initial planting of trees obtained from nursery stock. 4 (7) It shall be unlawful for any person to fail to provide the Director of parks, or his designee, with written notice, delivered at least 3 working days in advance, of the time and date on which removal of any tree will occur. Written notice pursuant to this section is required even if a permit for tree removal, as herein provided, has been obtained. .� (8) Each violation of the above subsections (b)(1-7) shall be a separate offense. (b) Penalty. Any person convicted of violating any provision of this Article V of Chapter 11 shall be subject to punishment as set forth in Section 1=8 of this Code. (c) Tree Removal Permits (1) Any person wishing to obtain a permit to remove or relocate a tree shall file an appropriate application with the Director of Parks, or his designee. Such application shall contain such information as the Director of Parks, or his designee, shall require to permit adequate enforcement of this section. (2) On request of the Director of Parks and when necessary to adequately apprise the Director of Parks of the intended tree removal, said application shall include a site plan showing the following: (A) Location of proposed driveways and other planned areas of structures on said site; (B) Location of all trees four (4) inches or over identified by trunk diameter and species; (C) Designation of all diseased trees and any trees endangering' any roadway pavement or structures, and trees endangering utility service lines; (D) Designation of any trees proposed to be removed, retained, and relocated, and areas which will remain undisturbed. (E) Any proposed grade changes which may adversely impact any trees on the site. (3) After filing said application, the Director of Parks, or his designee, shall review the application (and site plan if required) and determine what effect the ki intended removal or relocation of trees will have on the natural resources of the area. More specifically, the Director of Parks, or designee, shall consider: (A) Whether the trees intended for removal or relocation are necessary to minimize flood, snowslide, or landslide hazards; (B) Whether retention of the trees is necessary to prevent excessive water runoff or otherwise protect the watershed; (C) Whether the removal or relocation of the trees will cause wind erosion or otherwise adversely affect air quality; (D) The condition of the trees with respect to disease, danger of falling, and interference with utility lines; (E) The number and types of trees in the neighborhood, the contribution of the trees to the natural beauty of the area, and the effect of removal or relocation on property values in the area; (F) The necessity, or lack thereof, to remove the trees to allow reasonable economic use and enjoyment of the property; and, (G) The implementation of good forestry practices, including consideration of the number of healthy trees that the parcel of land in question can support. (H) The adequacy of the methods proposed to be used to relocate any trees. Based on review of these factors, the permit shall either be granted or denied by the Director of Parks. (4) Where construction of structures or improvements on any'property necessitates the removal or relocation of any trees, the Director of Parks may, as a condition for the approval of the removal or relocation, require that the owner replace any removed or relocated trees with a tree or trees of comparable value on the affected property. When in the opinion of the Director, of Parks replacement of removed or relocated trees cannot reasonably be accommodated on the affected property, the applicant shall pay a cash -in - lieu amount equal to the comparable value of the aggregate of all trees removed. Comparable value for purposes of this section shall mean a tree or ,trees of equal aggregate value and species to the replacement cost of the tree to be removed or relocated. C (5) No trees shall be removed from city property except in accordance with Article V of Chapter 19 of this Code. (6) The removal of dead trees shall require prior notice to the Parks Department, as set forth in paragraph (a) () and a permit from the City of Aspen. () In case of an emergency caused by a tree being in a hazardous or dangerous condition posing an immediate threat to person or property, such tree may be removed without resort to the procedures herein described; provided, however, that evidence of such an emergency is provided to the Director of Parks within 24 hours. (d) - Valuation of trees. When, in accordance with this section, the value of a tree must be determined the Basic Value shall equal $36.00 per square inch of the cross sectional area of the tree at the point where the diameter of the tree is measured. In calculating the Basic Value, the following equation shall be used: Basic Value = $36.00 x 3.14 x (D/2)2 Where: Section 4 D = the diameter of the tree in inches. This ordinance shall not have any effect on existing litigation and shall not operate as an abatement of any action or proceeding now pending under or by virtue of the ordinances repealed of amended as herein provided, and the same shall be construed and concluded under such prior ordinances. Section 5 If any section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase or portion of this ordinance is for any reason held invalid or unconstitutional in a court of competent jurisdiction, such portion shall be deemed a separate, distinct and independent provision and shall not affect the validity of the remaining portions thereof. A public hearing on the ordinance shall be held on the day of 1995, in the City Council Chambers, Aspen City Hall, Aspen, Colorado. INTRODUCED, READ AND ORDERED PUBLISHED as provided by law by the City Council of the City of Aspen on the day of , 1995. ATTEST: 1 _ Kathryn S. och, City Clerk 8 John S . Bennett, Mayor FINALLY adopted, passed and approved this day of E 1995. ATTEST; Kathryn' S 6ch, City Clerk U=.ocd 9 John S. Bennett, Mayor How to run a meeting Antony jay Reprinted from ra - - ol Business Review No. 76204 Ralph F. Lewis, Editor and Publisher G. Scott Hutchison, Executive Editor —Operations David W. Ewing, Executive Editor —Planning Virginia B. Fales, Managing Editor Timothy B. Blodgett, Senior Editor Victor L. Burford, Associate Editor Eliza G.C. Collins, Associate Editor Lynn M. Salerno, Assistant Editor Myles L. Mace, Contributing Editor Frank Glickman, Art Director Catharine -Mary Donovan, Production Manager Pamela Banks, Editorial Assistant Wanda A. Lankenner, Editorial Assistant Ridgely Ochs, Editorial Assistant Cheryl W. Pope, Editorial Assistant Edward C. Bursk, Honorary Editor Ernest D. Frawley, General Manager Editorial Board Lawrence E. Fouraker, Dean, Ex O f f icio Kenneth R. Andrews, Chairman Stephen A. Greyser, Board Secretary Raymond A. Bauer Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. C. Roland Christensen Gordon Donaldson John D. Glover Samuel L. Hayes, III Theodore Levitt Ralph F. Lewis George C. Lodge Claudine B. Malone James L. McKenney Richard S. Rosenbloom Arthur J. Rosenthal Paul A. Vatter Richard E. Walton Volume S4, Number 2 Harvard Business Review is published bimonthly by the Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University. Copyright Q 1976 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in U.S.A. Editorial offices, Boston, MA 02163. Second-class postage paid at Boston, MA and at additional mailing offices; POSTMASTER: send form 3579 to Harvard Business Review, Boston, MA 02163. Harvard uF I Business Review March -April 1976 Reprint Number 6 Ideas for action 76229 J.C. Dela f on; Roger G. Kennedy; Roger M. Kenny 20 Public directors merit a try Christopher D. Stone 762io 43 How to run a meeting Antony Jay 76204 58 Inflation accounting —the great controversy Richard F. Vancil 76211 68 Making the major sale Benson P. Shapiro and Ronald S. Posner 762o9 79 'Failure is a word I don't accept' An interview with John H. Johnson 762o5 89 Supervision: substance and style Saul W. Gellerman 7620; 100 Power is the great motivator David C. McClelland and David H. Burnham 762o6 Ill Affirmative Action and guilt -edged goals Neil C. ChurchilI and John K. Shank 7620I 117 Why most new consumer brands fail J. Hugh Davidson 76202 123 Business needs a new breed of EDP manager Richard L. Nolan 76207 134 You can't outguess the foreign exchange market William D. Serf ass, Jr. 76208 43 Antony Jay Why is it that any single meeting may be a waste of time, an irritant, or a barrier to the achievement of an organization's ob- jectives? The answer lies in the fact, as the author says, that "all sorts of human crosscurrents can sweep the discussion off course, and errors of psy- chology and technique on the chairman's part can defeat its purposes." This article offers guidelines on how to right things that go wrong in meetings. The discussion covers the functions of a meeting, the distinctions in size and type of meetings, ways to define the objectives, making preparations, the chairman's role, and ways to conduct a meeting that will achieve its objectives. Mr. Jay is chairman of Video Arts Ltd., a London - based producer of training films for industry. Cur- rently, the company is producing a film (featuring John Cleese of Monty Python) on the subject of meetings, and this article springs from the research Mr. Jay did for that project. He has also written many TV docu- mentaries, such as Royal Family, and authored several books, including Management & Machiavelli (Holt, Rine- hart & Winston, 1968). Drawings by Robert Osborn. Copyright © 1976 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. How to run At critical points things may go wrong, but here are ways of putting them right Why have a meeting anyway? Why indeed? A great many important matters are quite satisfactorily con- ducted by a single individual who consults nobody. A great many more are resolved by a letter, a memo, a phone call, or a simple conversation between two people. Sometimes five minutes spent with six peo- ple separately is more effective and productive than a half-hour meeting with them all together. Certainly a great many meetings waste a great deal of everyone's time and seem to be held for historical rather than practical reasons; many long-established committees are little more than memorials to dead problems. It would probably save no end of man- agerial time if every committee had to discuss its own dissolution once a year, and put up a case if it felt it should continue for another twelve months. If this requirement did nothing else, it would at least refocus the minds of the committee members on their purposes and objectives. But having said that, and granting that "referring the matter to a committee" can be a device for dilut- ing authority, diffusing responsibility, and delaying decisions, I cannot deny that meetings fulfill a deep human need. Man is a social species. In every organization and every human culture of which we have record, people come together in small groups at regular and frequent intervals, and in larger "trib- al" gatherings from time to time. If there are no meetings in the places where they work, people's attachment to the organizations they work for will be small, and they will meet in regular formal or 44 Harvard Business Review March -April 1976 informal gatherings in associations, societies, teams, clubs, or pubs when work is over. This need for meetings is clearly something more positive than just a legacy from our primitive hunt- ing past. From time to time, some technomaniac or other comes up with a vision of the executive who never leaves his home, who controls his whole operation from an all -electronic, multichannel, microwave, fiber-optic video display dream console in his living room. But any manager who has ever had to make an organization work greets this vision with a smile that soon stretches into a yawn. There is a world of science fiction, and a world of human reality; and those who live in the world of human reality know that it is held together by face-to-face meetings. A meeting still performs func- tions that will never be taken over by telephones, teleprinters, Xerox copiers, tape recorders, television monitors, or any other technological instruments of the information revolution. Functions of a meeting At this point, it may help us understand the mean- ing of meetings if we look at the six main functions that meetings will always perform better than any of the more recent communication devices: 1 In the simplest and most basic way, a meeting de- fines the team, the group, or the unit. Those present belong to it; those absent do not. Everyone is able to look around and perceive the whole group and sense the collective identity of which he or she forms a part. We all know who we are —whether we are on the board of Universal International, in the over- seas sales department of Flexitube, Inc., a member of the school management committee, on the East Hampton football team, or in Section No. 2 of Pla- toon 4, Company B. 2 A meeting is the place where the group revises, up- dates, and adds to what it knows as a group. Every group creates its own pool of shared knowledge, ex- perience, judgment, and folklore. But the pool con- sists only of what the individuals have experienced or discussed as a group—i.e., those things which every individual knows that all the others know, too. This pool not only helps all members to do their jobs more intelligently, but it also greatly increases the speed and efficiency of all communications among them. The group knows that all special nuances ar wider implications in a brief statement will be im mediately clear to its members. An enormous amount of material can be left unsaid that would have to be made explicit to an outsider. Running a meeting 45 But this pool needs constant refreshing and re- plenishing, and occasionally the removal of impu- rities. So the simple business of exchanging informa- tion and ideas that members have acquired sepa- rately or in smaller groups since the last meeting is an important contribution to the strength of the group. By questioning and commenting on new con- tributions, the group performs an important "diges- tive" process that extracts what's valuable and dis- cards the rest. Some ethologists call this capacity to share knowl- edge and experience among a group "the social mind," conceiving it as a single mind dispersed among a number of skulls. They recognize that this "social mind" has a special creative power, too. A group of people meeting together can often produce better ideas, plans, and decisions than can a single individual, or a number of individuals, each working alone. The meeting can of course also produce worse outputs or none at all, if it is a bad meeting. However, when the combined experience, knowl- edge, judgment, authority, and imagination of a half dozen people are brought to bear on issues, a great many plans and decisions are improved and some- -imes transformed. The original idea that one person might have come up with singly is tested, amplified, refined, and shaped by argument and discussion (which often acts on people as some sort of chem- ical stimulant to better performance), until it sat- isfies far more requirements and overcomes many more objections than it could in its original form. 3 A meeting helps every individual understand both the collective aim of the group and the way in which his own and everyone else's work can con- tribute to the group's success. 4 A meeting creates in all present a commitment to the decisions it makes and the objectives it pursues. Once something has been decided, even if you orig- inally argued against it, your membership in the group entails an obligation to accept the decision. The alternative is to leave the group, but in practice this is very rarely a dilemma of significance. Real opposition to decisions within organizations usually consists of one part disagreement with the decision 71) nine parts resentment at not being consulted be - :)re the decision. For most people on most issues, it is enough to know that their views were heard and considered. They may regret that they were not followed, but they accept the outcome. And just as the decision of any team is binding on all the members, so the decisions of a meeting of people higher up in an organization carry a greater authority than any decision by a single executive. It is much harder to challenge a decision of the board than of the chief executive acting on his own. The decision -making authority of a meeting is of special importance for long-term policies and pro- cedures. 5 In the world of management, a meeting is very often the only occasion where the team or group actually exists and works as a group, and the only time when the supervisor, manager, or executive is actually perceived as the leader of the team, rather than as the official to whom individuals report. In some jobs the leader does guide his team through his personal presence —not just the leader of a pit gang or construction team, but also the chef in the hotel kitchen and the maitre d'h6tel in the restau- rant, or the supervisor in a department store. But in large administrative headquarters, the daily or week- ly meeting is often the only time when the leader is ever perceived to be guiding a team rather than doing a job. 6 A meeting is a status arena. It is no good to pretend that people are not or should not be concerned with their status relative to the other members in a group. It is just another part of human nature that we have to live with. It is a not insignificant fact that the word order means (a) hierarchy or pecking order; (b) an instruction or command; and (c) stability and the way things ought to be, as in "put your affairs in order," or "law and order." All three definitions are aspects of the same idea, which is indivisible. Since a meeting is so often the only time when members get the chance to find out their relative standing, the "arena" function is inevitable. When a group is new, has a new leader, or is composed of people like department heads who are in competi- tion for promotion and who do not work in a single team outside the meeting, "arena behavior" is likely to figure more largely, even to the point of dominat- ing the proceedings. However, it will hardly signify with a long-established group that meets regularly. Despite the fact that a meeting can perform all of the foregoing main functions, there is no guarantee that it will do so in any given situation. It is all too possible that any single meeting may be a waste of 46 Harvard Business Review March -April 1976 time, an irritant, or a barrier to the achievement of the organization's objectives. What sort of meeting? While my purpose in this article is to show the critical points at which most meetings go wrong, and to indicate ways of putting them right, I must first draw some important distinctions in the size and type of meetings that we are dealing with. Meetings can be graded by size into three broad categories: (1) the assembly—ioo or more people who are expected to do little more than listen to the main speaker or speakers; (2) the council-40 or 5o people who are basically there to listen to the main speaker or speakers but who can come in with questions or comments and who may be asked to contribute something on their own account; and (3) the committee —up to zo (or at the most zz) people, all of whom more or less speak on an equal footing under the guidance and control of a chairman. We are concerned in this article only with the "committee" meeting, though it may be described as a committee, a subcommittee, a study group, a project team, a working party, a board, or by any of dozens of other titles. It is by far the most com- mon meeting all over the world, and can perhaps be traced back to the primitive hunting band through which our species evolved. Beyond doubt it con- stitutes the bulk of the i z million meetings that — so it has been calculated —take place every day in the United States. Apart from the distinction of size, there are certain considerations regarding the type of meeting that profoundly affect its nature. For instance: Frequency —A daily meeting is different from a week- ly one, and a weekly meeting from a monthly one. Irregular, ad hoc, quarterly, and annual meetings are different again. On the whole, the frequency of meetings defines —or perhaps even determines —the degree of unity of the group. Composition —Do the members work together on the same project, such as the nursing and ancillary staff on the same ward of a hospital? Do they work on different but parallel tasks, like a meeting of the Running a meeting 47 company's plant managers or regional sales man- agers? Or are they a diverse group —strangers to each other, perhaps —united only by the meeting itself and by a common interest in realizing its objectives? Motivation —Do the members have a common ob- jective in their work, like a football team? Or do they to some extent have a competitive working relationship, like managers of subsidiary companies at a meeting with the chief executive, or the heads of research; production, and marketing discussing finance allocation for the coming year? Or does the desire for success through the meeting itself unify them, like a neighborhood action group or a new product design committee? Decision process —How does the meeting group ul- timately reach its decisions? By a general consensus, "the feeling of the meeting"? By a majority vote? Or are the decisions left entirely to the chairman himself, after he has listened to the facts, opinions, and discussions? Kinds of meetings The experienced meeting -goer will recognize that, although there seem to be five quite different meth- ods of analyzing a meeting, in practice there is a tendency for certain kinds of meetings to sort them- selves out into one of three categories. Consider: The daily meeting, where people work together on the same project with a common objective and reach decisions informally by general agreement. The weekly or monthly meeting, where members work on different but parallel projects and where there is a certain competitive element and a greater likelihood that the chairman will make the final decision himself. The irregular, occasional, or "special project" meet- ing, composed of people whose normal work does not bring them into contact and whose work has little or no relationship to the others'. They are united only by the project the meeting exists to promote and motivated by the desire that the project should succeed. Though actual voting is uncommon, every member effectively has a veto. Of these three kinds of meeting, it is the first — the workface type —that is probably the most com- mon. It is also, oddly enough, the one most likely to be successful. Operational imperatives usually ensure that it is brief, and the participants' experi- ence of working side by side ensures that commu- nication is good. The other two types are a different matter. In these meetings all sorts of human crosscurrents can sweep the discussion off course, and errors of psychology and technique on the chairman's part can defeat its purposes. Moreover, these meetings are likely to bring together the more senior people and to pro- duce decisions that profoundly affect the efficiency, prosperity, and even survival of the whole organiza- tion. It is, therefore, toward these higher -level meet- ings that the lessons of this article are primarily directed. Before the meeting The most important question you should ask is: "What is this meeting intended to achieve?" You can ask it in different ways —"What would be the likely consequences of not holding it?" "When it is over, how shall I judge whether it was a success or a failure?" —but unless you have a very clear require- ment from the meeting, there is a grave danger that it will be a waste of everyone's time. Defining the objective You have already looked at the six main functions that all meetings perform, but if you are trying to use a meeting to achieve definite objectives, there are in practice only certain types of objectives it can really achieve. Every item on the agenda can be placed in one of the following four categories, or divided up into sections that fall into one or more of them: 1 In f ormative-digestive—Obviously, it is a waste of time for the meeting to give out purely factual in- formation that would be better circulated in a docu- ment. But if the information should be heard from a particular person, or if it needs some clarifica- tion and comment to make sense of it, or if it has deep implications for the members of the meeting, then it is perfectly proper to introduce an item onto the agenda that requires no conclusion, decision, or 48 Harvard Business Review March -April 1976 action from the meeting; it is enough, simply, that the meeting should receive and discuss a report. The "informative -digestive" function includes prog- ress reports —to keep the group up to date on the current status of projects it is responsible for or that affect its deliberations —and review of completed projects in order to come to a collective judgment and to see what can be learned from them for the next time. 2 Constructive -originative —This "What shall we do?" function embraces all items that require something new to be devised, such as a new policy, a new strategy, a new sales target, a new product, a new marketing plan, a new procedure, and so forth. This sort of discussion asks people to contribute their knowledge, experience, judgment, and ideas. Ob- viously, the plan will probably be inadequate unless all relevant parties are present and pitching in. 3 Executive responsibilities —This is the "How shall we do it?" function, which comes after it has been decided what the members are going to do; at this point, executive responsibilities for the different components of the task have to be distributed around the table. Whereas in the second function the con - tributors' importance is their knowledge and ideas, here their contribution is the responsibility for im- plementing the plan. The fact that they and their subordinates are affected by it makes their contribu- tion especially significant. It is of course possible to allocate these executive responsibilities without a meeting, by separate in- dividual briefings, but several considerations often make a meeting desirable: First, it enables the members as a group to find the best way of achieving the objectives. Second, it enables each member to understand and influence the way in which his own job fits in with the jobs of the others and with the collective task. Third, if the meeting is discussing the implementa- tion of a decision taken at a higher level, securing the group's consent may be of prime importance. If SO/ the fact that the group has the opportunity to formulate the detailed action plan itself may be the decisive factor in securing its agreement, because in that case the final decision belongs, as it were, to the group. Everyone is committed to what the group decides and is collectively responsible for the final shape of the project, as well as individually answerable for his own part in it. Ideally, this sort of agenda item starts with a policy, and ends with an action plan. 4 Legislative framework: Above and around all con- siderations of "What to do" and "How to do it," there is a framework —a departmental or divisional organization —and a system of rules, routines, and procedures within and through which all the activity takes place. Changing this framework and intro- ducing a new organization or new procedures can be deeply disturbing to committee members and a threat to their status and long-term security. Yet leaving it unchanged can stop the organization from adapting to a changing world. At whatever level this change happens, it must have the support of all the perceived leaders whose groups are affected by it. The key leaders for this legislative function must collectively make or confirm the decision; if there is any important dissent, it is very dangerous to close the discussion and make the decision by de- cree. The group leaders cannot expect quick deci- sions if they are seeking to change the organization framework and routines that people have grown up with. Thus they must be prepared to leave these Running a meeting Cyr items unresolved for further discussion and con- sultation. As Francis Bacon put it —and it has never been put better —"Counsels to which time hath not been called, time will not ratify." Making preparations The four different functions just discussed may of course be performed by a single meeting, as the group proceeds through the agenda. Consequently, it may be a useful exercise for the chairman to go through the agenda, writing beside each item which function it is intended to fulfill. This exercise helps clarify what is expected from the discussion and helps focus on which people to bring in and what questions to ask them. People The value and success of a committe meeting are seriously threatened if too many people are present. Between 4 and 7 is generally ideal; io is tolerable, and 12 is the outside limit. So the chairman should do everything he can to keep numbers down, con- sistent with the need to invite everyone with an important contribution to make. The leader may have to leave out people who expect to come or who have always come. For this job he may need tact; but since people generally preserve a fiction that they are overworked already and dis- like serving on committees, it is not usually hard to secure their consent to stay away. If the leader sees no way of getting the meeting down to a manageable size, he can try the following devices: (a) analyze the agenda to see whether every- one has to be present for every item (he may be able to structure'the agenda so that some people can leave at half time and others can arrive); (b) ask himself whether he doesn't really need two separate, smaller meetings rather than one big one; and (c) determine whether one or two groups can be asked to thrash some of the topics out in advance so that only one of them needs to come in with its pro- posals. Remember, too, that a few words with a member on the day before a meeting can increase the value of the meeting itself, either by ensuring that an im- ortant point is raised that comes better from the ,door than from the chair or by preventing a time - wasting discussion of a subject that need not be touched on at all. Papers The agenda is by far the most important piece of paper. Properly drawn up, it has a power of speeding and clarifying a meeting that very few people under- stand or harness. The main fault is to make it un- necessarily brief and vague. For example, the phrase "development budget" tells nobody very much, whereas the longer explanation "To discuss the pro- posal for reduction of the 1976-1977 development budget now that the 'introduction of our new prod- uct has been postponed" helps all committee mem- bers to form some views or even just to look up facts and figures in advance. Thus the leader should not be afraid of a long agenda, provided that the length is the result of his analyzing and defining each item more closely, rather than of his adding more items than the meet- ing can reasonably consider in the time allowed. He should try to include, very briefly, some indication of the reason for each topic to be discussed. If one item is of special interest to the group, it is often a good idea to single it out for special mention in a covering note. The leader should also bear in mind the useful de- vice of heading each item "For information," "For discussion," or "For decision" so that those at the meeting know where they are trying to get to. 50 Harvard Business Review March -April 1976 And finally, the chairman should not circulate the agenda too far in advance, since the less organized members will forget it or lose it. Two or three days is about right —unless the supporting papers are vo- luminous. Other `paper' considerations: The order of items on the agenda is important. Some aspects are obvious — the items that need urgent decision have to come before those that can wait till next time. Equally, the leader does not discuss the budget for the re - equipment program before discussing whether to put the reequipment off until next year. But some as- pects are not so obvious. Consider: The early part of a meeting tends to be more lively and creative than the end of it, so if an item needs mental energy, bright ideas, and clear heads, it may be better to put it high up on the list. Equally, if there is one item of great interest and concern to everyone, it may be a good idea to hold it back for a while and get some other useful work done first. Then the star item can be introduced to carry the meeting over the attention lag that sets in after the first 15 to 20 minutes of the meeting. Some items unite the meeting in a common front while others divide the members one from another. The leader may want to start with unity before entering into division, or he may prefer the other way around. The point is to be aware of the choice and to make it consciously, because it is apt to make a difference to the whole atmosphere of the meet- ing. It is almost always a good idea to find a unify- ing item with which to end the meeting. A common fault is to dwell too long on trivial but urgent items, to the exclusion of subjects of funda- mental importance whose significance is long-term rather than immediate. This can be remedied by putting on the agenda the time at which discussion of the important long-term issue will begin —and by sticking to it. Very few business meetings achieve anything of value after two hours, and an hour and a half is enough time to allocate for most purposes. It is often a good idea to put the finishing time of a meeting on the agenda as well as the starting time. If meetings have a tendency to go on too long, the chairman should arrange to start them one hour before lunch or one hour before the end of work. Generally, items that ought to be kept brief can be introduced ten minutes from a fixed end point. The practice of circulating background or proposal papers along with the minutes is, in principle, a good one. It not only saves time, but it also helps in formulating useful questions and considerations in advance. But the whole idea is sabotaged once the papers get too long; they should be brief or pro- vide a short summary. If they are circulated, ob- viously the chairman has to read them, or at least must not be caught not having read them. (One chairman, more noted for his cunning than his conscientiousness, is said to have spent 30 sec- onds before each meeting going through all the pa- pers he had not read with a thick red pen, marking lines and question marks in the margins at random, and making sure these were accidentally made vis- ible to the meeting while the subject was being dis- cussed.) If papers are produced at the meeting for discussion, they should obviously be brief and simple, since everyone has to read them. It is a supreme folly to bring a group of people together to read six pages of closely printed sheets to themselves. The excep- tion is certain kinds of financial and statistical papers whose function is to support and illustrate verbal points as reference documents rather than to be swallowed whole: these are often better tabled at the meeting. All items should be thought of and thought about in advance if they are to be usefully discussed. List- ing "Any other business" on the agenda is an invita- tion to waste time. This does not absolutely preclude the chairman's announcing an extra agenda item at a meeting if something really urgent and unforeseen crops up or is suggested to him by a member, pro- vided it is fairly simple and straightforward. Nor does it preclude his leaving time for general un- structured discussion after the close of the meeting. The chairman, in going through the agenda items in advance, can usefully insert his own brief notes of points he wants to be sure are not omitted from Running a meeting 51 the discussion. A brief marginal scribble of "How much notice?" or "Standby arrangements?" or what- ever is all that is necessary. The chairman's job Let's say that you have just been appointed chair- man of the committee. You tell everyone that it is a bore or a chore. You also tell them that you have been appointed "for my sins." But the point is that you tell them. There is no getting away from it: some sort of honor or glory attaches to the chair- man's� role. Almost everyone is in some way pleased and proud to be made chairman of something. And that is three quarters of the trouble. Master or servant? Their appointment as committee chairman takes people in different ways. Some seize the opportunity to impose their will on a group that they see them- selves licensed to dominate. Their chairmanship is a harangue, interspersed with demands for group agreement. Others are more like scoutmasters, for whom the collective activity of the group is satisfaction enough, with no need for achievement. Their chair- manship is more like the endless stoking and fuel- ing of a campfire that is not cooking anything. And there are the insecure or lazy chairmen who look to the meeting for •reassurance and support in their ineffectiveness and inactivity, so that they can spread the responsibility for their indecisiveness among the whole group. They seize on every expres- sion of disagreement or doubt as a justification for avoiding decision or action. But even the large majority who do not go to those extremes still feel a certain pleasurable tumescence of the ego when they take their place at the head of the table for the first time. The feeling is no sin: the sin is to indulge it or to assume that the pleasure is shared by the other members of the meeting. It is the chairman's self-indulgence that is the great- est single barrier to the success of a meeting. His first duty, then, is to be aware of the temptation and 52 Harvard Business Review March-ADIil 1976 of the dangers of yielding to it. The clearest of the danger signals is hearing himself talking a lot dur- ing a discussion. One of the best chairmen I have ever served under makes it a rule to restrict her interventions to a single sentence, or at most two. She forbids herself ever to contribute a paragraph to a meeting she is chairing. It is a harsh rule, but you would be hard put to find a regular attender of her meetings (or anyone else's) who thought it was a bad one. There is, in fact, only one legitimate source of plea- sure in chairmanship, and that is pleasure in the achievements of the meeting —and to be legitimate, it must be shared by all those present. Meetings are necessary for all sorts of basic and primitive human reasons, but they are useful only if they are seen by all present to be getting somewhere —and some- where they know they could not have gotten to individually. If the chairman is to make sure that the meeting achieves valuable objectives, he will be more effec- tive seeing himself as the servant of the group rather than as its master. His role then becomes that of assisting the group toward the best conclusion or decision in the most efficient manner possible: to interpret and clarify; to move the discussion for- ward; and to bring it to a resolution that everyone understands and accepts as being the will of the meeting, even if the individuals do not necessarily agree with it. His true source of authority with the members is the strength of his perceived commitment to their combined objective and his skill and efficiency in helping and guiding them to its achievement. Con- trol and discipline then become not the act of im- posing his will on the group but of imposing the group's will on any individual who is in danger of diverting or delaying the progress of the discussion and so from realizing the objective. Once the members realize that the leader is im- pelled by his commitment to their common ob- jective, it does not take great force of personality for him to control the meeting. Indeed, a sense of urgency and a clear desire to reach the best con- clusion as quickly as possible are a much more effective disciplinary instrument than a big gavel. The effective chairman can then hold the discussion to the point by indicating that there is no time to pursue a particular idea now, that there is no time for long speeches, that the group has to get through this item and on to the next one, rather than by resorting to pulling rank. There are many polite ways the chairman can in- dicate a slight impatience even when someone else is speaking —by leaning forward, fixing his eyes on the speaker, tensing his muscles, raising his eye- brows, or nodding briefly to show the point is taken. And when replying or commenting, the chairman can indicate by the speed, brevity, and finality of his intonation that "we have to move on." Conversely, he can reward the sort of contribution he is seeking by the opposite expressions and intonations, show- ing that there is plenty of time for that sort of idea, and encouraging the speaker to develop the point. After a few meetings, all present readily understand this nonverbal language of chairmanship. It is the chairman's chief instrument of educating the group into the general type of "meeting behavior" that he is looking for. He is still the servant of the group, but like a hired mountain guide, he is the one who knows the destination, the route, the weather signs, and the time the journey will take. So if he suggests that the members walk a bit faster, they take his advice. This role of servant rather than master is often obscured in large organizations by the fact that Running a meeting 53 the chairman is frequently the line manager of the members: this does not, however, change the reality of the role of chairman. The point is easier to see in, say, a neighborhood action group. The question in that case is, simply, "Through which person's chairmanship do we collectively have the best chance of getting the children's playground built?" However, one special problem is posed by this defini- tion of the chairman's role, and it has an extremely interesting answer. The question is: How can the chairman combine his role with the role of a mem- ber advocating one side of an argument? The answer comes from some interesting studies by researchers who sat in on hundreds of meetings to find out how they work. Their consensus finding is that most of the effective discussions have, in fact, two leaders: one they call a "team," or "social," leader; the other a "task," or "project," leader. Regardless of whether leadership is in fact a single or a dual function, for our purposes it is enough to say that the chairman's best role is that of social leader. If he wants a particular point to be strongly advocated, he ensures that it is someone else who leads off the task discussion, and he holds back until much later in the argument. He might indeed change or modify his view through hearing the dis- cussion, but even if he does not it is much easier for him to show support for someone else's point later in the discussion, after listening to the argu- ments. Then, he can summarize in favor of the one he prefers. The task advocate might regularly be the chairman's second -in -command, or a different person might advocate for different items on the agenda. On some subjects, the chairman might well be the task ad- vocate himself, especially if they do not involve conflict within the group. The important point is that the chairman has to keep his "social leadership" even if it means sacrificing his "task leadership." However, if the designated task advocate persists in championing a cause through two or three meet- ings, he risks building up quite a head of antago- nism to him among the other members. Even so, this antagonism harms the group less by being directed at the "task leader" than at the "social leader." Structure of discussion It may seem that there is no right way or wrong way to structure a committee meeting discussion. A subject is raised, people say what they think, and finally a decision is reached, or the discussion is terminated. There is some truth in this. Moreover, it would be a mistake to try and tie every discussion of every item down to a single immutable format. Nevertheless, there is a logical order to a group dis- cussion, and while there can be reasons for not fol- lowing it, there is no justification for not being aware of it. In practice, very few discussions are inhibited, and many are expedited, by a conscious adherence to the following stages, which follow ex- actly the same pattern as a visit to the doctor: "What seems to be the trouble?" The reason for an item being on a meeting agenda is usually like the symptom we go to the doctor with: "I keep getting this pain in my back" is analogous to "Sales have risen in Germany but fallen in France." In both cases it is clear that something is wrong and that something ought to be done to put it right. But until the visit to the doctor, or the meeting of the Euro- pean marketing committee, that is about all we really know. "How long has this been going on?" The doctor will start with a case history of all the relevant back- ground facts, and so will the committee discussion. A solid basis of shared and agreed -on facts is the best foundation to build any decision on, and a set of pertinent questions will help establish it. For ex- ample, when did French sales start to fall off? Have German sales risen exceptionally? Has France had delivery problems, or less sales effort, or weaker advertising? Have we lost market share, or are our competitors' sales falling too? If the answers to all these questions, and more, are not established at the start, a lot of discussion may be wasted later. "Would you just lie down on the couch?" The doctor will then conduct a physical examination to find out how the patient is now. The committee, too, will want to know how things stand at this moment. Is action being taken? Do long-term orders show the same trend? What are the latest figures? What is the current stock position? How much money is left in the advertising budget? "You seem to have slipped a disc." When the facts are established, you can move toward a dignosis. A doctor may seem to do this quickly, but that is the result of experience and practice. He is, in fact, rapidly eliminating all the impossible or far-fetched explanations until he leaves himself with a short list. The committee, too, will hazard and eliminate a 54 Harvard Business Review March -April 1976 variety of. diagnoses until it homes in on the most probable —for example, the company's recent en- ergetic and highly successful advertising campaign in Germany plus new packaging by the market leader in France. "Take this round to the druggist." Again, the doctor is likely to take a shortcut that a committee meeting may be wise to avoid. The doctor comes out with a single prescription, and the committee, too, may agree quickly on a single course of action. But if the course is not so clear, it is better to take this step in two stages: (a) construct a series of op- tions —do not, at first, reject any suggestions outright but try to select and combine the promising elements from all of them until a number of thought-out, coherent, and sensible suggestions are on the table; and (b) only when you have generated these options do you start to choose among them. Then you can discuss and decide whether to pick the course based on repackaging and point -of -sale promotion, or the one based on advertising and a price cut, or the one that bides its time and saves the money for heavier new -product promotion next year. If the item is at all complex or especially significant, it is important for the chairman not only to have the proposed course of the discussion in his own head, but also to announce it so that everyone knows. A good idea is to write the headings on an easel pad with a felt pen. This saves much of the time wasting and confusion that result when people raise items in the wrong place because they were not privy to the chairman's secret that the right place was coming up later on in the discussion. Conducting the meeting Just as the driver of a car has two tasks, to follow his route and to manage his vehicle, so the chair- man's job can be divided into two corresponding tasks, dealing with the subject and dealing with the people. Dealing with the subject The essence of this task is to follow the structure of discussion as just described in the previous sec- tion. This, in turn, entails listening carefully and keeping the meeting pointed toward the objective. At the start of the discussion of any item, the chair- man should make it clear where the meeting should try to get to by the end. Are the members hoping to make a clear decision or firm recommendation? Is it a preliminary deliberation to give the members something to go away with and think about? Are they looking for a variety of different lines to be pursued outside the meeting? Do they have to ap- prove the proposal, or merely note it? The chairman may give them a choice: "If we can agree on a course of action, that's fine. If not, we'll have to set up a working party to report and recom- mend before next month's meeting." The chairman should make sure that all the mem- bers understand the issue and why they are dis- cussing it. Often it will be obvious, or else they may have been through it before. If not, then he or someone he has briefed before the meeting should give a short introduction, with some indication of the reason the item is on the agenda; the story so far; the present position; what needs to be estab- lished, resolved, or proposed; and some indication of lines of inquiry or courses of action that have been Running a meeting 55 suggested or explored, as well as arguments on both sides of the issue. If the discussion is at all likely to be long or com- plex, the chairman should propose to the meeting a structure for it with headings (written up if neces- sary), as I stated at the end of the section on "Struc- ture of discussion." He should listen carefully in case people jump too far ahead (e.g., start proposing a course of action before the meeting has agreed on the cause of the trouble), or go back over old ground, or start repeating points that have been made earlier. He has to head discussion off sterile or irrelevant areas very quickly (e.g., the rights and wrongs of past decisions that it is too late to change, or distant prospects that are too remote to affect present actions). It is the chairman's responsibility to prevent mis- understanding and confusion. If he does not follow an argument or understand a reference, he should seek clarification from the speaker. If he thinks two people are using the same word with different mean- ings, he should intervene (e.g., one member using promotion to mean point -of -sale advertising only, and another also including media publicity). He may also have to clarify by asking people for facts or experience that perhaps influence their view but are not known to others in the meeting. And he should be on the lookout for points where an in- terim summary would be helpful. This device fre- quently takes only a few seconds, and acts like a life belt to some of the members who are getting out of their depth. Sometimes a meeting will have to discuss a draft document. If there are faults in it, the members should agree on what the faults are and the chair- man should delegate someone to produce a new draft later. The group should never try to redraft around the table. Perhaps one of the most common faults of chair- manship is the failure to terminate the discussion early enough. Sometimes chairmen do not realize that the meeting has effectively reached an agree- ment, and consequently they let the discussion go on for another few minutes, getting nowhere at all. Even more often, they are not quick enough to close a discussion before agreement has been reached. A discussion should be closed once it has become clear that (a) more facts are required before further progress can be made, (b) discussion has revealed that the meeting needs the views of people not present, (c) members need more time to think about the subject and perhaps discuss it with colleagues, (d) events are changing and likely to alter or clarify the basis of the decision quite soon, (e) there is not going to be enough time at this meeting to go over the subject properly, or (f) it is becoming clear that two or three of the members can settle this outside the meeting without taking up the time of the rest. The fact that the decision is difficult, likely to be disputed, or going to be unwelcome to somebody, however, is not a reason for postponement. At the end of the discussion of each agenda item, the chairman should give a brief and clear summary of what has been agreed on. This can act as the dictation of the actual minutes. It serves not merely to put the item on record, but also to help people realize that something worthwhile has been achieved. It also answers the question "Where did all that get us?" If the summary involves action by a member of the meeting, he should be asked to confirm his acceptance of the undertaking. Dealing with the people There is only one way to ensure that a meeting starts on time, and that is to start it on time. Late- comers who find that the meeting has begun without them soon learn the lesson. The alternative is that the prompt and punctual members will soon realize that a meeting never starts until ten minutes after the advertised time, and they will also learn the lesson. Punctuality at future meetings can be wonderfully reinforced by the practice of listing late arrivals (and early departures) in the minutes. Its ostensible and perfectly proper purpose is to call the latecomer's attention to the fact that he was absent when a decision was reached. Its side effect, however, is to tell everyone on the circulation list that he was late, and people do not want that sort of informa- tion about themselves published too frequently. There is a growing volume of work on the signifi- cance of seating positions and their effect on group behavior and relationships. Not all the findings are generally agreed on. What does seem true is that: Having members sit face to face across a table facil- itates opposition, conflict, and disagreement, though of course it does not turn allies into enemies. But 56 Harvard Business Review March -April 1976 it does suggest that the chairman should think about whom he seats opposite himself. Sitting side by side makes disagreements and con- frontation harder. This in turn suggests that the chairman can exploit the friendship -value of the seats next to him. There is a "dead man's corner" on the chairman's right, especially if a number of people are seated in line along from him (it does not apply if he is alone at the head of the table). As a general rule, proximity to the chairman is a sign of honor and favor. This is most marked when he is at the head of a long, narrow table. The greater the distance, the lower the rank —just as the lower - status positions were "below the salt" at medieval refectories. Control the garrulous In most meetings someone takes a long time to say very little. As chairman, your sense of urgency should help indicate to him the need for brevity. You can also suggest that if he is going to take a long time it might be better for him to write a paper. If it is urgent to stop him in full flight, there is a useful device of picking on a phrase (it really doesn't mat- ter what phrase) as he utters it as an excuse for cut- ting in and offering it to someone else: "Inevitable decline —that's very interesting. George, do you agree that the decline is inevitable?" Draw out the silent In any properly run meeting, as simple arithmetic will show, most of the people will be silent most of the time. Silence can indicate general agreement, or no important contribution to make, or the need to wait and hear more before saying anything, or too good a lunch, and none of these need worry you. But there are two kinds of silence you must break: 1 The silence of diffidence. Someone may have a valu- able contribution to make but be sufficiently ner- vous about its possible reception to keep it to him- self. It is important that when you draw out such a contribution, you should express interest and pleasure (though not necessarily agreement) to en- courage further contributions of that sort. 2 The silence of hostility. This is not hostility to ideas, but to you as the chairman, to the meeting, and to the process by which decisions are being reached. This sort of total detachment from the whole pro- ceedings is usually the symptom of some feeling of affront. If you probe it, you will usually find that there is something bursting to come out, and that it is better out than in. Protect the weak junior members of the meeting may provoke the disagreement of their seniors, which is perfectly reasonable. But if the disagreement escalates to the point of suggesting that they have no right to con- tribute, the meeting is weakened. So you may have to take pains to commend their contribution for its usefulness, as a pre-emptive measure. You can rein- force this action by taking a written note of a point they make (always a plus for a member of a meeting) and by referring to it again later in the discussion (a double -plus). Encourage the clash of ideas But, at the same time, discourage the clash of per- sonalities. A good meeting is not a series of dialogues between individual members and the chairman. In- stead, it is a crossflow of discussion and debate, with the chairman occasionally guiding, mediating, prob- ing, stimulating, and summarizing, but mostly let- ting the others thrash ideas out. However, the meet- ing must be a contention of ideas, not people. If two people are starting to get heated, widen the discussion by asking a question of a neutral mem- ber of the meeting, preferably a question that re- quires a purely factual answer. Watch out for the suggestion -squashing reflex Students of meetings have reduced everything that can be said into questions, answers, positive reac- tions, and negative reactions. Questions can only seek, and answers only supply, three types of re- sponse: information, opinion, and suggestion. In almost every modern organization, it is the sug- gestions that contain the seeds of future success. Although very few suggestions will ever lead to any- thing, almost all of them need to be given every chance. The trouble is that suggestions are much easier to ridicule than facts or opinions. If people feel that making a suggestion will provoke the negative reaction of being laughed at or squashed, they will soon stop. And if there is any status -jos- tling going on at the meeting, it is all too easy to use the occasion of someone's making a suggestion as the opportunity to take him down a peg. It is all too easy and a formula to ensure sterile meetings. Running a meeting 57 The answer is for you to take special notice and show special warmth when anyone makes a sug- gestion, and to discourage as sharply as you can the squashing -reflex. This can often be achieved by re- quiring the squasher to produce a better suggestion on the spot. Few suggestions can stand up to squash- ing in their pristine state: your reflex must be to pick out the best part of one and get the other com- mittee members to help build it into something that might work. Come to the most senior people last Obviously, this cannot be a rule, but once someone of high authority has pronounced on a topic, the less senior members are likely to be inhibited. If you work up the pecking order instead of down it, you are apt to get a wider spread of views and ideas. But the juniors who start it off should only be asked for contributions within their personal experience and competence. ("Peter, you were at the Frankfurt Exhibition —what reactions did you pick up there?") Close on a note of achievement Even if the final item is left unresolved, you can refer to an earlier item that was well resolved as you close the meeting and thank the group. If the meeting is not a regular one, fix the time and place of the next one before dispersing. A little time spent with appointment diaries at the end, especial- ly if it is a gathering of five or more members, can save hours of secretarial telephoning later. Following the meeting Your secretary may take the minutes (or better still, one of the members), but the minutes are your re- sponsibility. They can be very brief, but they should include these facts: The time and date of the meeting, where it was held, and who chaired it. Names of all present and apologies for absence. All agenda items (and other items) discussed and all decisions reached. If action was agreed on, record (and underline) the name of the person responsible for the assignment. El The time at which the meeting ended (important, because it may be significant later to know whether the discussion lasted is minutes or 6 hours). The date, time, and place of the next committee meeting. POINTS TO CONSIDER AND EXERCISES Several strategies, as well as resources, can be used to improve the quality of local planning commission meetings. The videotape you have watched, as well as the accompanying workbook, were developed to function as learning tools for managing commission meetings. In addition to these resources, we would like to use - this opportunity to comment on several meeting management strategies that may be of assistance as you seek ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your planning commission meetings. Rules of Procedure Taking time to capture in words how your meetings will be run, how business will be transacted, how the public will be treated, and expectations the commission will place upon its membership, are typically included in a rule of procedure statement. Rules of procedure can be included in the commission's bylaws, or it can be a stand alone publication. Strong consideration should be given to developing rules of procedure. Improved Time Management The success a commission achieves is a function of numerous variables, including the efficient use of meeting time. The road to more effective meetings should begin with an examination of how you currently manage your time. Two rather simple exercises can help provide you with this information. All you need to complete the exercises are a sheet of paper and two drawings of blank clock faces, showing a 60-minute span of time. Exercise #l: Determining the Relative Proportions of Your Pre -Meeting Time. To complete the first exercise, list the various planning commission related activities you engage in before scheduled meetings on the blank sheet. Such activities could include time spent reading and studying reports, visiting sites that will be featured in upcoming meetings, talking to staff members or citizens, and the like. Next draw and. label lines on the first clock face that correspond to the activities and the amount of time you devote to each. At this point in the exercise it is important to understand that you must ' "condense" your activities to fit the sixty minute time frame. In other words, if you spend half your between -meeting planning related activity on reading and studying reports, you should draw a line on the clock running from twelve to six, representing half of the total sixty minutes - regardless of whether the actual time you spent reviewing reports was, say, one hour or three hours. The goal is to determine relative proportions. Exercise #2: Determining the Relative Proportions of Your Meeting Time. This exercise is the same as the first one, except that you are now indicating how you spend your meeting time. Again, first list the kind of activities your commission engages in during meetings (i.e., public hearings, discussing issues, old business). Next, determine the proportion of time you spend on each type of activity, and display this on the second clock face. Meeting Management 29 By calculating how you spend your time, and then seeing it starkly displayed on a clock face, you might be surprised. Do the relative amounts of time you spend on various activities - both at your meeting and between meetings - correspond to their relative importance? Does your time allocation correspond to your commission's priorities? For some commissions and commissioners, this exercise may reveal that real priorities are being "buried" by time spent on activities which are not as significant. Meeting Management 30 DEBRIEFING YOUR COMIVIISSION MEETING: A MORE FORMAL APPROACH Your commission can also improve its meetings through another technique --a formal debriefing survey. The survey form listed here may help your commission and staff identify weak areas, as well as confirm things you're doing right. Try conducting this survey at the end of your next commission meeting. Debrieefimg Survey Form Circle the appropriate number: 1-strongly agree, 2-agree, 3-undecided 4-disagree, 5-strongly disagree 1) ' I was notified of this meeting in sufficient time to prepare for it. 1 2 3 4 5 2) I understood why this meeting was being held and what specific outcomes were expected. 1 2 3 4 5 3) I understood what was expected of me as a participant and what was expected of the other participants. 1 2 3 4 5 4) I understood how the meeting was intended to flow and when it would end. 1 2 3 4 5 5) Most participants listened carefully to each other. 1 2 3 4 5 6) Most participants expressed themselves openly, honestly, and directly. 1 2 3 4 5 7) Agreements were explicit and clear, and conflicts were openly explored and constructively managed. 1 2 3 4 5 S) The meeting generally proceeded as intended and achieved its intended purpose. 1 2 3 4 5 9) My participation contributed to the outcomes achieved by the meeting. 1 2 3 4 5 10) Overall, I was satisfied with this meeting and feel my time was well spent. 1 2 3 4 5 Meeting Management 31 LEADERSHIP SKILLS FOR THE COMMISSION CHAIR The skill a chairperson displays in running a meeting can mean the difference between success and failure. Ideally, the leader should facilitate the meeting by encouraging open communication, ensuring equality of participation, and interpreting and clarifying the discussion towards the resolution of objectives or purposes identified by the group. An additional responsibility of the leader is to alert group members that they also share in the responsibility for successful or less than successful meetings. Reviewing task functions and maintenance functions is one way to accomplish this task. Task functions are those activities which contribute to the purpose; objective, or goal of the group. Maintenance functions are those activities and actions which must be monitored in order to keep the group in good operating order. Although all group members share in this total responsibility, the group leader must be particularly conscious of the functions and their interface in a meeting environment. A summary of common task and maintenance functions follows. Task Functions These are functions required in selecting and carrying out a group task. 1. Initiating Activity: proposing solutions, suggesting new ideas, new definitions of the problem, new attack on the problem, or new organization of material. 2. Seeking Information: asking for clarification of suggestions, requesting additional information or facts. 3. Seeking Opinion: looking for an expression feeling about something from the members, seeking clarification of values, suggestions, or ideas. 4. Giving Information: offering facts or generalizations, relating one's own experience to the group problem to illustrate points. 5. Giving Opinion: stating an opinion or belief concerning a suggestion or one of several suggestions, particularly concerning its value rather than its factual basis. 6. Elaborating: clarifying, giving examples or developing meanings, trying to envision how a proposal might work if adopted. 7. Coordinating: showing relationship among various ideas or suggestions, trying to pull ideas and suggestions together, trying to draw together activities of various subgroups or members. 8. Summarizing: pulling together related ideas or suggestions, restating suggestions after the group has discussed them. Meeting Management 32 Maintenance Functions These are functions required in strengthening and maintaining group life and activities. 1. Encouraging: being friendly, warm, responsive to others, praising others and their ideas, agreeing with and accepting contributions of others 2. Gatekeeping: trying to make it possible for another member to make a contribution to the group by saying, "We haven't heard anything from Jan yet," or suggesting limited talking time for everyone so that every member will have a chance to be heard 3. Standard Setting: expressing standards for the group to use in choosing its content or procedures or in evaluating its decisions, reminding group to avoid decisions which conflict with group standards 4. Following: going along with decisions of the group, thoughtfully accepting ideas of others, serving as an audience during group discussion 5. Expressing Group Feeling: summarizing the group's feeling, describing reactions . of the group to ideas or solutions Combined Task and Maintenance Functions 1. Evaluating: comparing group decisions or accomplishments to group standards, measuring accomplishments against goals 2. Diagnosing: determining sources of difficulties and appropriate steps, analyzing the main blocks to progress 3. Testing for Consensus: tentatively asking for group opinions in order to find out whether the group is nearing consensus on a decision, sending up trial balloons to test group opinions 4. Mediating: harmonizing, conciliating differences in points of view, making compromise solutions 5. Relieving Tension: draining off negative feeling by jesting or pouring oil on troubled waters, putting a tense situation in wider context A group strengthens itself and improves its chance of being effective when its members become more conscious of the role function needed at all times, as well as more sensitive to and aware of the degree to which they can help meet group needs through their group actions. This sense of "oneness," in many instances, is the quality we see in some groups but have a hard time labeling. Meeting Management 33 TIPS FOR BETTER MEETINGS There is no foolproof way to insure that a meeting will always be productive and effective. However, good planning, member involvement, and competent leadership are steps in the right direction. The following meeting management techniques, which should be viewed as a unitary design, will also help. Before the Meeting • Define the purpose for the meeting • Develop an agenda and plan the activities for the meeting • Distribute the agenda in advance of the meeting • Arrange the meeting room such that members will feel welcomed and will want to participate Starting and Conducting Meetings • Start the meeting on time • Review the agenda and explain the meeting's purpose • Stick to the agenda and move through it in an efficient manner • Seek to involve everyone in the discussion • Keep -the discussion focused by keeping notes and summarizing • Serve as a meeting facilitator and not meeting dominator End of the Meeting • End the meeting on time • Recap the meeting's highlights/accomplishments • Review and assign any after -meeting duties • Debrief the meeting with the participants • Brainstorm about the next meeting's agenda • Set the date, time and place for the next meeting • Thank everyone for attending and participating Meeting Management 34 After the Meeting • Review the debriefing results • Prepare the meeting's minutes and distribute them • Compare the meeting agenda with what actually happened • Monitor the progress toward completion of assigned duties and tasks Meeting Management 35