Vertical slice meetings

Large meetings

Reading Supplement

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Here is a review of the types of meetings that are most common in organizations where people are employed.

A large meeting will be of several dozen or more people and is usually to present information with some opportunity to field questions. They are rare and usually only a matter of great significance can justify taking so many people away from their jobs at the same time. Meetings of this type are likely to take one of three forms.

Bad news meetings are to let everyone know at the same time some particularly disconcerting information, so that the message is not likely to change by being conveyed through a chain of reinterpretation by intermediaries, and so as to try to develop some concerted response. Hostile bids for the company’s equity, the loss of an anxiously awaited order to a competitor, a need to shed staff or the announcement of a new venture by a competitor that will threaten the business are the type of topics of such meetings. They are extremely difficult to run and require careful preparation, as well as personal authority and skill from the person in charge.

Good news meetings are the direct opposite, but still are directed towards achieving a concerted response. The hostile bid has been defeated, an important order has been won, expansion is on the way, or a company has been acquired that will strengthen an otherwise weak situation. Running them is easy.

Change of course meetings are usually approached by the people in charge with campaigning enthusiasm, and they get fairly cross when the audience seems less than exuberant. It will probably be the introduction of a new cultural initiative through which more people will be empowered and challenged to ensure the future viability of the operation. Most members of the audience will react by saying to themselves, ‘I’ll get enthusiastic when I feel that my future will be reasonably secure, that I can handle what they want me to do, and that they actually know what they’re doing’. Their overt reaction will be to ask a series of cautious questions which seem to those in charge to miss the point of all the excitement and opportunity.

Vertical slice meetings are where a group meets to deal with matters which affectpeople at different levels in the hierarchy, but narrowly rather than broadly.An example could be a meeting of representatives from various sections of a laboratory to discuss aspects of operational safety. It would be unrealistic and unwieldy to have all members of the laboratory staff present, but it is not a matter that cannot satisfactorily be resolved without input from all staff categories. It is the specialist activities and technical skills of the participants that form the core agenda for any vertical slice meeting.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-26