{"id":7076932,"date":"2026-10-05T13:28:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T13:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7076932"},"modified":"2026-10-05T13:28:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T13:28:17","slug":"when-good-meeting-processes-serve-the-wrong-purpose-conferences-that-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7076932","title":{"rendered":"When good meeting processes serve the wrong purpose : Conferences That Work"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"Meeting\"MeetingI recently read an Ars Technica article about Microsoft\u2019s apparent efforts to engage communities where it is building data centers<\/a>. One passage particularly caught my attention.<\/p>\n

Nathan Taft<\/a>, a senior campaigner with the environmental advocacy group Stand.earth<\/a>, described what he called Microsoft\u2019s use of \u201cdiffusion techniques\u201d at town hall meetings.<\/p>\n

Microsoft doesn\u2019t put a representative or panel in front of the room to answer questions, he said. Rather:<\/p>\n

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\u2018At town hall meetings, Microsoft seems to rely on \u201cdiffusion techniques\u201d to avoid answering residents\u2019 questions transparently, Taft told Ars. Rather than host a single speaker or panel addressing all questions in the room, \u201cwe\u2019ve seen in multiple different places, they\u2019ll have five or six different reps scattered across a room, and people come up and talk in little clusters,\u201d Taft said. \u201cAnd they\u2019ll be like, \u2018That\u2019s a good question. Let me write this on a sticky note and put it on the wall.\u2019 And it seems very rote and kind of like they\u2019re ticking a box. It doesn\u2019t seem like they want to hear real dissent.\u201d\u2019<\/em>
\u2013Microsoft goes quiet after church groups ask for 1% of data center costs<\/a>, Ashley Belanger<\/a>, arsTECHNICA<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Taft\u2019s description suggests a process that looks participatory. People are invited to speak. Their questions are recorded. Multiple representatives are available. Nobody has to stand up in front of a microphone.<\/p>\n

And yet something important is missing.<\/p>\n

The people in the room aren\u2019t having a whole-group conversation with the people who have the authority to respond to what they\u2019re saying.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a significant omission, because the process described above may be a good process for a particular purpose. The problem, as Taft sees it, is that Microsoft seems to be using a process designed to accomplish one objective in a situation that, he argues, requires another.<\/p>\n

Collecting concerns isn\u2019t the same as discussing them<\/h2>\n

Suppose we want to know what 100 people in a room are concerned about. There are many good ways to find out.<\/p>\n

I might ask people to write their concerns on sticky notes. I might have them discuss their concerns in pairs and then report back. Or, I might use small groups, a survey, a digital polling system, a human spectrogram, or other techniques included in my book The Power of Participation<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

These processes can be extremely useful. They help ensure that we hear from more than the few people who are quickest to grab a microphone. They can surface concerns that might otherwise remain invisible. And they can give quieter participants a way to contribute.<\/p>\n

And they can produce a useful map of what\u2019s on people\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n

But that map is not a conversation.<\/p>\n

If the purpose of the meeting is simply to discover what people think, then collecting and categorizing their concerns may be exactly what we need.<\/p>\n

But if the purpose is to discuss a proposed course of action with the people who have the authority to make or change the proposal, we need a different process.<\/p>\n

People need to be able to hear one another\u2019s concerns. They need to discover where their concerns overlap or conflict. They need to ask the people responsible for the proposal how they respond to those concerns. To challenge answers, clarify misunderstandings, introduce information that hasn\u2019t been considered yet, and perhaps change their own views.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, they need to know whether the people with authority are actually prepared to engage with what they have said.<\/em><\/p>\n

A wall full of sticky notes alone doesn\u2019t accomplish that.<\/p>\n

The subtle power of a good process<\/h2>\n

A badly designed participatory process is relatively easy to recognize. Someone lectures for an hour and then says, \u201cAny questions?\u201d An agenda is packed with presentations. Participants have no meaningful opportunity to influence what happens.<\/p>\n

But a process can look participatory while quietly preventing the participation that matters.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s harder to see.<\/p>\n

The Ars Technica article describes a company facing a community that has serious concerns about a proposed development.<\/p>\n

Microsoft could have invited everyone to a town hall and have one representative answer questions from the floor.<\/p>\n

That could have become messy. Questions could build on one another. Someone might challenge an answer. Another person might introduce information the representative wasn\u2019t prepared for. The conversation might move in a direction the company didn\u2019t anticipate.<\/p>\n

Instead, according to Taft\u2019s description, Microsoft distributed its representatives around the room. Now every resident could be heard, every question could be recorded, and every concern could be \u201ccaptured.\u201d<\/p>\n

The meeting could generate an impressive-looking record of community input.<\/p>\n

But the people in the room may never have the opportunity to collectively interrogate the proposal\u2014or the people proposing it.<\/em><\/p>\n

The process has successfully accomplished one objective while making another much less likely.<\/p>\n

The same thing can happen in other settings<\/h2>\n

This isn\u2019t just a Microsoft problem. In fact, Microsoft may not be doing anything deliberately deceptive here. The Ars article reports what community advocates perceived, which is different from knowing the company\u2019s intentions.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon is much broader.<\/p>\n

For example, imagine a group considering a significant organizational change.<\/p>\n

A facilitator asks everyone to write their suggestions and concerns on sticky notes and clusters them. The facilitator supports the group as it identifies themes. The group produces a report identifying, say, twelve major issues.<\/p>\n

So far, good process.<\/p>\n

Then the report is sent to the leadership team. And that\u2019s where the process can go wrong.<\/p>\n

The group has used a process for expressing<\/em> its views, but not necessarily one for doing anything with them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The leadership team can now say, quite accurately, \u201cWe listened to everyone,\u201d without acting on the report.<\/p>\n

Process is a means, not an end<\/h2>\n

This is one reason I get nervous when people become enamored of particular meeting techniques<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A technique\u2019s\u00a0value depends on what it is intended to accomplish and what happens before and after it.<\/p>\n