Comments on: Death by committee

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 14:44:55 +0000

I was on the board of directors for a youth theatre group for a couple of years. Our chairman was a former public television administrator. Nothing, and I mean _nothing_ got decided in only one meeting. Everything had to “marinate” for at least a couple of meetings before he’d get around to allowing any action to be taken.

It got to the point that anyone on the board pushing for a decision or action on a pending item was rewarded with that particlar item being referred to a subcommittee (chaired, always, by the board chairman) from which it would rarely ever emerge.

He left the board six months after I gave up in disgust. The new board chair doesn’t have a background in the public sector: things are getting done now – she makes sure of it.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:58:51 +0000

In addition to Grant’s excellent analysis of expressive individualism in NFPs, the lack of clear and measurable output goals inherent in many NFP missions promotes the substitution of ritual for instrumental action. We can’t be sure if we’re doing anything useful in a big-picture sense, but deciding on personnel is a concrete task. It reminds me of Parkinson’s law for finance committees, that they spend most of their time debating trivial expenditures they can understand, rather than massive investments beyond their comprehension.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 01:56:44 +0000

If she has a “boss”, then why is there this need for universal participation to the detriment of the enterprise (and by extension to the _goals_ of the enterprise…which presumably are why all those folks work there to begin with)? I mean, that’s what managers are _for_.

I’m not necessarily advocating the 100% meeting-free culture dreamed of by the target demographic for Dilbert books…I’ve worked in companies run that way and it’s not the utopia it might seem. But whether one is in a for-profit business, a NFP organization, or a nonprofit charity, the entity one works for is going to have some sort of primary mission…and that mission is unlikely to be “making personnel policy decisions”. Whether your mission is curing disease, teaching children, feeding the hungry…or just earning good returns for your investors, time spent in avoidable meetings is time _not_ spent accomplishing that mission.

One would think that NFP/NP workers would care MORE about that lost opportunity than folks working for some profit-oriented corporation who just want to take a paycheck home every week.

By: liz

liz — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:33:13 +0000

Well, I’ve been involved with an educational NFP startup, and the policy development — the applying our principles & mission to hypotheticals — did take forever-and-a-day (that is a formulation from fairytales, btw), but once in place, the execution of policy was not quite as fast as FP, but danged close.

“Admit this one?” “Nope, doesn’t qualify”; “admit that one?” “Ehh…let’s wait to see who else is in the pile.”

Of course, we are in the Silicon Valley…

By: dilys

dilys — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 23:22:23 +0000

I’ve reached near tinfoil-hat levels as to my certainty that the key is Myers Briggs Feelers in NFP’s and Thinkers in FP management, at least, and that never the twain shall meet.

And in those terms, you’re especially correct. Feelers that run amok with the resources, including time, forfeit their credibility to Thinkers, and thus contribute to the imbalance, the lack of “conscious business,” that they lament with such pathos.

By: Tom Guarriello

Tom Guarriello — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 20:38:31 +0000

I lived (and “led”) in the NFP world for 17 years, Grant, and you describe well the expressive flavor of individualism that’s dominant there. As in kabuki, symbolic theatrics dominate most interactions. The rituals and symbols are primarily focused on encouraging participation (gathering, “input”) and helping the vanquished save face. Effectiveness and/or efficiency are rarely addressed.

An friend of mine from academia once quipped (in a line he probably stole from someone), “Do you know why the politics in universities are so dirty? Because the stakes are so low.” That’s certainly true for NFPs as well.