Chapter 6: How to Make Decisions on the Project Team

Reality Check

Whenever we teach meeting management in the Rath & Strong “Team and Influence Skills Workshop,” we feel we should apologize for telling people what they already know. Who hasn’t heard that you should have an agenda? Keep a task list? Record decisions?

Then we break the class up into teams and ask them to work on a Six Sigma-related task that has relevance in their organization (for example, how to attract and retain Black Belts). Even though the teams know that they are being videotaped (for instructional purposes), and even though we have just finished discussing the need for meeting management, the teams go into their next meeting without an agenda, and no one writes anything down.

They spend the first half of the next meeting trying to remember what they agreed to at the last meeting. Usually, at least in workshops, people are willing to try using these techniques once they see how inefficient their meetings are. To our surprise, participants routinely rate this section as highly valuable. People often ask for extra copies of the Checklist: Running the Project Team Meeting to take to use in their Six Sigma project team meetings and their parent/ teacher organizations, condo boards, and neighborhood committees. They complain about leaving their team meetings unsure whether decisions have been made because the group is allowed to move on in the agenda (if there even is an agenda) without specifically dispensing with the current agenda item.

The simple Checklists for Planning, Running, and Following up After the Project Team Meeting described here save endless hours, but teams often resist using them. We’ve seen the best results when the team leader (or some other member of the team) makes a running joke out of sticking to the structure until it becomes second nature to the entire group.