FastTrain

Clash of cliques

Have you ever attended a meeting where two cliques start hammering away at each other in a mutually destructive way?

As a bystander who had been asked to attend this meeting to give my thoughts I was horrified. At first all seemed to go well. There were notes to absorb, the Chairman introduced the purpose of the meeting and minutes of the previous meeting were reviewed and agreed.

From there on, whenever one person said something, another person would disagree. Soon it became clear that there were two schools of thought (my polite language for two cliques) and there was to be no compromise. The meeting ended in disarray with the Chairman having lost complete control.

Afterwards the Chairman asked me for my thoughts; what could he do to stop this from happening? I suggested the following actions:

• First he needed to talk to the chief protagonists and tell them that enough was enough. It needed to be done as soon after the meeting as possible and it had to be done in an even handed way without being judgemental
• If that saw a change in the next meeting then the Chairman should ensure that future meetings were very strongly chaired by him
• If there was no change then the Chairman would have no choice but to review who should and should not be on the project group; some people would have to be removed and a smaller group which is more easily Chaired should be put in place
• Meanwhile, project notes should go out earlier (they had been going out last minute) so that more informal discussion could take place before the meeting
• Also the Chairman would have to take a much more strident line, starting the meeting on time, making it clear that all contributions would be time limited and that anyone getting involved in personal attacks would be asked to leave the meeting
• This was a mixed discipline project group, so ultimately the Chairman would have to make it clear that any person asked to leave the meeting would be reported to their line manager.

As a starting point this was going to be a handful for the Chairman to take on, but hopefully it would lead to some short term improvements. Ultimately, of course, he might have to abandon the meetings and seek another way of moving the agenda forward, but that is for the future.