用团体工作程序技术改善会议成效(五)

Here are a few techniques for evaluating alternatives during meetings:
 26. Straw-votes: If you are evaluating a list of brainstorming ideas, one of the quickest ways to get a reading on which items justify group discussion time is to give every participant a fixed number of colored dots or gummed stars (usually 5-10) and tell them to indicate which ideas they feel deserve further discussion by applying their colored dots/stars to the wall or flip chart sheets, next to the item. Typically they can use their dots anyway they want, e.g. if they want to use all their dots on one item, they can do so. The voting should occur only after everybody understands what is meant by each item, and after similar ideas have been combined (so that votes aren't split between the same idea worded two different ways).
 27. Another variation of straw voting is to have everybody pick the five ideas they think are most significant (or deserve discussion), putting them in rank order. Then they give 5 points to their highest ranked item, 4 points to the next highest, and so on. Record the scores alongside the items.
 28. Straw-voting is a way of reducing the number of items, but it will still leave you with a number of "finalists," and should not be used to choose among them.
 29. Screening: Sometimes it is possible to screen out ideas by using decision rules related to cost, feasibility, months to bring on line, environmental impact. A rule might be: "total initial investment can't exceed $1,000,000." Having used a screening process on many large-scale decisions I can tell you that screening can reduce the number of options, but it won't make a decision for you. In the final analysis you will need to "formulate" the best solution, often drawing from pieces of the earlier ideas.
 30. Decision Analysis: There are a number of "decision analysis" techniques that are widely advocated. Most are variants of what is described in academia as "multi-attribute utility analysis." The fundamental concept is to (1) evaluate each alternative based on all critical attributes, e.g. cost, aesthetics, performance; (2) have all key decision makers identify the relative value of each attribute e.g. "cost is twice as important as aesthetics;" and (3) analyze which alternatives best satisfy the weights that have been identified. The answer could be different for each decision maker, because each decision maker assigned a different relative weight to the attributes.
 31. To illustrate, when you choose a new car there are a number of attributes that need to be taken into account: price, roominess, maintenance record, trade-in, and, yes, sexiness. The first job is to establish where each alternative car fits on the scale for each individual attribute. The second task is to weight the attributes, that is, you may think price is relatively unimportant, while you wife thinks it is all-important. Use this analysis to identify areas of agreement and key areas of disagreement. The more sophisticated versions of these techniques will also allow you to do sensitivity analysis, e.g. if we doubled the priority we gave to cost would it change which car we selected?
 32. One comment: This kind of analysis can be very useful in identifying the differences in priorities, and understanding which alternatives best match particular priorities. But unless everybody gives exactly the same weights to the attributes, (i.e. your wife and you both give exactly the same weight to cost, performance, maintenance and sexiness – an unlikely event), this kind of analysis will not make the decision for you.
八. Select a Course of Action:   33. I don't know any magic group process technique that will make decisions for you. That's why you get the big bucks! Some decision makers make decisions based on intuitive "Aha's," while others depend on detailed quantitative analysis.
   34 I do know, from sometimes sad experience, that it is imperative to know who is making the decision. Sometimes it is "the boss." Sometimes it's a consensus decision. Sometimes it's a consensus decision unless the group can't agree, then the boss decides. Any of these approaches can work. What does not work is to have the group think it is making the decision but the boss is really going to make it. Expectations need to be clear and well defined.
  九. Define the Implementation Plan   35. This is the stage at which the group thinks through all the tasks to implement your solution, and assigns responsibilities and deadlines for completing them.
   36. Some of the simpler PERT-charting techniques help groups visualize all the components of a successful plan. This means that the group needs to work on a large white board or even the wall, to be able to visualize all the parts. One meeting center even has magnetized pieces of metal whiteboard, cut in the shape of PERT chart symbols, that will stick to the walls and can even be moved around on the wall.
   37. If you use a SMART Board and digital projector, you can use a flow-chart or project management software application and project it on the whiteboard. As a group you can use all the tools from the software application, then download all your conclusions into a laptop. The Meeting Pro software that comes with your SMART Board also permits you to move items around on the board, without erasing, and has an excellent way of recording assignments, deadlines, etc. You can download all this information into a laptop, then send everybody their assignment lists by e-mail.
 十. Establish Mechanisms for Determining Whether or Not Your Approach is Working    38. The team needs to define some way of determining whether its plan is, in fact, solving the problem (or is taking advantage of the opportunity) with which it started. When you set up a defined process for evaluating performance you can adjust your plan without getting into the "blame game," (e.g. trying to assign responsibility for failure). Without such a process, the plan usually has to break down completely before anyone will take action. Then you're stuck not only with the original problem, but all the bad feelings and ill-will that result from failure.
   39. The Total Quality Management literature describes numerous techniques (pareto charts, scatter diagrams, histograms) for displaying your measurements. But the real issue is deciding what to measure. As James Robinson, then the CEO of American Express, once said: "Employees do what management inspects, not what management expects." The same is true for teams. What you decide to measure is what people will pay attention to.
 
 十一. Working on the Walls
   40. Almost all of the techniques described above require recording participants' comments on flip chart sheets posted on walls, or on a whiteboard. Some of my clients have meeting rooms where the entire walls of the room are whiteboard. Groups like to "think big" like this. The only problem is getting the information down from the whiteboard so people can walk away with it. That's the advantage of using digital whiteboards like SMART Board (although I long for the day that SMART Boards cover whole walls, so groups can "think big" yet have the advantage of downloading). The other advantage of the digital whiteboards is that you can project a graphic template of a group process template on the board, have the group fill in the blanks, then download both the template and the group's responses.
 41. If you don't have a digital whiteboard, think about laying out your whole process on a large continuous sheet of butcher paper, leaving space for the group's responses. Not only does your butcher-paper template guide the group through the process, but you can fold it up and walk away with it at the end of the meeting.

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