Committees

[watervole]

 I have long believed that the larger the committee, the less actually gets done.

 

Tonight's meeting of the Allotment Association pretty well confirmed that.  There's only seven of us, but that's probably two too many.  It all ends up with too much talking at cross-purposes and very little being achieved.

Comments

[katherine]

I would agree with that math!

[ranunculus]

Oh, God That Be please make those meetings better than our Echo meetings!

[pensnest]

One of life's great truths. My chorus has a *lot* of committee members, and it needs someone with a very firm hand to keep the discussions under control. At the moment, I'm not sure there is that someone. Also, it can be hard to discern whether a decision was actually made, and what it was!

My other chorus has a committee of four. It's brilliant.

[watervole]

Oh yes!

I run my sword dance team (all 5-7 of us) pretty much as dictatorship. Everyone is happy with this! I just check whether everyone is happy with what I'm doing, and the AGM usually takes no more than 10 mins at the most.

[igenlode]

This is why dictatorships/('strong leaders') are popular -- it's very much easier and generally more productive to have one person decide what everyone else is going to do, rather than attempt to make decisions by universal consensus. The latter *can* be done, but it's hard work... and it just doesn't seem to be natural human behaviour. Apparently we are, at heart, herd animals.

In terms of committees, competent chairmanship is absolutely essential, in order to make sure everyone gets heard and to cut short the wafflers and digressionary tendencies (however fascinating these latter may be ;-)