Committees
I’ve been involved in the last couple of months in a committee, my first after leaving the Organisation half a year ago. I’ve also jumped hastily to several conclusions, including believing that the classic design-by-committee product is really really terrible. But we knew that already, didn’t we?
The group dynamics matter a lot. Even without throwing in animosity (and its variants), and without powertalk, it can really make a difference when you have 7 people and 2 of them don’t talk. It means that you’ve got effectively 5 people instead of 7 - which results in exponentially (?) fewer lines of communication and perhaps potential conflict - and development.
Without communication, things just don’t work. Given a number of people, the more people are silent, the less useful the crowd intelligence is. Then when the numbers are dangerously small (like 5), and the group dynamics and stars are in alignment, often it just boils down to (i) who’s louder, and (ii) who talks more. That is hardly a healthy situation.
Much as I’d like to present some stereotypical characters here, I think I’ve hardly seen them all - just a couple of groups only! That said, it’s also been done to death by various gurus, so.. no loss.
I suppose it is during such groupthink situations that critical thinking and a good grasp of logical fallacies are required. And one of the (few) things I’ve taken away from TOK is that sometimes.. logic just doesn’t work for some positions, and you’ll have to resort to faith to justify it. It’s really amusing (yet somewhat sad) to see someone try and use logic to counter a faith-based argument, which usually ends up leading nowhere, especially if that someone’s logic is fawlty and he obviously just doesn’t want to be proven wrong.
I have my pride too! But at times it is necessary just to let things slide, and resurrect the issue at a later time. For whatever reason I’ve always been Secretary in all my committees, despite my atrocious handwriting, but it lets me manipulate the agenda if necessary >=D
It’s also somewhat unfair to expect everyone to put in the same amount of commitment as you do. That does not go anywhere near solving the issue of raising people’s commitment though. Frankly I wouldn’t even try to do that - it seems so terrible to try and manipulate people to do that, but I’m also full of hot air right now as I’m feeling vaguely sleep deprived and my brain hasn’t been working after generating pseudo-TOK content today evening. I find that my post-TOK recovery times have been getting worse and worse of late, as increasing amounts of TOKenism needs to be generated for various assessments.
Oh yes, committees. It’s also surprisingly hard to schedule a meeting with just 7 people. Is there some calculation for the probability of that? All those fancy shared availability calendar things in the world won’t help if that mythical free slot just doesn’t exist!
For a time I wished people would take the time and effort into writing coherent, (slightly) persuasive emails that would actually discuss. That was not so long ago; but now I’m disillusioned after getting a grand total of 2 return emails in six months. I guess people just work differently - some are better suited to expressing things verbally (or physically), so why not let them be in their element? That sounds so great and fantastic doesn’t it. I think I’ve started talking to myself.
Anecdotally, I’ve had two types of meetings this year: the usual sort, which goes off on a tangent every 5 mins when the very distracted person makes a remark about some fantasy or another, and someone else continues on that thread, and they start a mini conversation while the rest of us just keep mum and return to fiddling with our phones. I know it’s all good to create camaraderie and chumminess but isn’t there a time and place for that? When we’re sitting down for dinner-supper then fine please do have that, it would be quite enjoyable if it wasn’t for your earlier monopolising of our time.
Just yesterday evening I was whining mentally about that to myself and how annoying it is to keep going off track like that and seemingly get nothing done.
Then today, I found that there’s the other sort when the noisy person isn’t around and everyone sits around being quiet (so quiet passers-by thought we were being all solemn and official-like) until the second-in-noisy person makes some noise and if he’s lucky gets a response from someone. Then silence reigns again. Nothing gets done anyway so no biggie.
I’m not sure what to think anymore.
But if anything, we all (me too!) have to learn how not to waste other people’s time.
Right now I’m just vaguely shocked that I’ve managed to blabber on for 800 words while thinking about barbecues.
