6 ms·

Robert's Rules of Order

49 points by larve 3y ago

esafak 3y ago
Does anybody use these at work?
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  We use these for monthly meetings of a non-profit (very small, only 6 board members)
- scottyah 3y ago
  I held the position that enforces these rules while in college, so I've gotten some familiarity with them. I do not recommend them for work, they are too strict and are designed to prevent anyone from speaking up, which is typically the opposite of what you want in most small groups at work. They are great for keeping a bunch of people from talking over each other. Like any formal education, it is great to have learned the methodologies and be able to apply parts of it in the situations that require it, like when there's one coworker that cuts people off too often.
  - patmorgan23 3y ago
    Roberts rules are Felixable. They're a good set of defaults or at least take inspiration from once you get past 5-10 people. Every organization/group is different, if they need rules for their meetings they need to be tailored for that group.
  - Ancapistani 3y ago
    > they are too strict and are designed to prevent anyone from speaking up, which is typically the opposite of what you want in most small groups at work Agreed. Generally speaking, the more people are involved in something, the more benefit there is to a formal structure. As I mentioned in another comment, there are still things that can be learned from RRO that might be helpful in a professional setting, but generally speaking it's just way too much.
- laserbeam 3y ago
  I wish I did... I'm having a hard time convincing anyone they are worth it. I've had a positive experience with them in Toastmasters (public speaking club). There is a time and place for them. In my experience, the biggest benefits are: - they force a group to define what is being voted on (via ammendments) - they separate debating from voting - they make it clear when a decision has been made and it's time to apply it If you're stuck kicking the can on plans and decisions, it may be worth implementing a version of these rules.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  They are useful for committees but not really for project groups. I introduced some of it to our CAB, and it works in the sense that the CAB is just a soft machine that approves or rejects changes. Everything stays on the rails and we are done in time for lunch.
- DaveFlater 3y ago
  I participated in several standards organizations that used Robert's Rules. They were FAR more effective at getting stuff done than the other organizations I've been involved with. The key contribution of Robert's Rules is right in the name: order. Everyone has a chance to speak, but in an orderly fashion. No shouting down. And when enough has been said, you vote on it and move on. One party who refuses to cooperate cannot hold the proceedings hostage forever.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  The core principles of Robert's Rules are 100% applicable to work. Its about understanding the "reasons" behind the rules, rather than the rules themselves. 1. Roberts Rules states that the #1 order of business at every meeting is a vote on the prior-meeting's minutes. The written record is king in Robert's rules. In an office environment, this means that any meeting that must "exist" must be written down and secondly (this is _VERY_ important), all stakeholders in the decision need written acknowledgement that the written-record is correct. Consider ISSUE#55, a hypothetical programming feature that should be implemented before version 3.55 of the computer program you're writing. A meeting occurred on January 5th saying Issue#55 needs to fix the GUI to accept usernames of length 20, but not of length 5. Writing down these issues is not enough or sufficient. The most important part of this "issue" is the signoff: all people of the meeting (developers, product managers, customers if possible) should be on the email saying "Yes, Issue#55 as written in Jira is an appropriate summary of what we want, and the feature you want to program is a good idea". Because come 5 months from now when crap happens, we all know everyone's going to point fingers at each other and blame each other. Having an appropriate signoff is as important (if not more important) than the written documentation. So again: Robert's rules on "Agree to the secretary's meeting summary of the last meeting" is HUGELY important, in practice. But you gotta "see" what that really means in your office environment. ---------- Etc. etc. etc. Every other rule exists for a reason in Robert's rules. Minority talking point. Ability to filibuster and shut down debate by filling the space with crap (and how to avoid the Filibuster through time-requirements or other such features). The 2-times-to-talk per issue helps prevent nonsensical loops. Give people a point, and then one opportunity for a counterpoint, and that's enough for most situations. Let dead issues stay dead. Do not allow people to drudge up old issues and distract. Etc. etc. All of Roberts Rules are rules of this nature, but they don't say the "why", instead they're just written as dry "10 minutes per discussion point, 2-times to talk per issue", style because all the rules are so numerous. Its very more important to learn the "spirit of the law" and the reasons why parliamentary theory exists.
martinky24 3y ago
These days this exists just for frat boys. They love it.
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  FFA uses it for their meetings, and even have parliamentary procedure competitions. Weirdly, I've found it to be a lot more useful as an adult than I'd have guessed. It's rare to actually need to know how to run a formal business meeting, but the time I spent back then learning about the procedures, their history, and why the rules were structured in the way they are has paid off. I've had several situations where a meeting at work had devolved into a very low-level discussion of just one of the things that we needed to address. If that goes on too long, I typically interrupt and suggest that the people involved in the discussion set up a time to get together later, hash out the details, then come back with the results at our next meeting. The key is to then explicitly designate one person to be responsible for organizing that and reporting back. I've had great success with that approach, and while I've never used the term "committee"... that's exactly what it is. Setting an agenda for a meeting ahead of time is super helpful. Taking notes to share is too. If you do that, bring those notes to the next meeting and as people start arriving read them back and ask if you missed anything. Soon people will start expecting that, and your meetings will be much more focused and productive. Congratulations - you're now the de facto secretary of your group, and each time you meet you're reading back the minutes of the previous meeting. Your meetings end up starting on time, you spend less time with pleasantries and such every time as people arrive late, and people actually know WTF is going on as soon as you start. IMO, there is a lot to learn from the structured ways we did things in the past. They were set up that way for a reason. We may not call it the same thing these days or have a rule book sitting next to us for every meeting... but that doesn't mean there's no value to learning about the "old ways" and implementing the parts that make sense.
- codingdave 3y ago
  You should attend some school board or city council meetings to see how widespread its usage really is.
- squirrel6 3y ago
  Other have mentioned Rusty’s rules; in either case (Robert or Rusty’s version) the basic mechanics of parliamentary procedure are a useful framework. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a single organization where more than a few rules or basic principles are in active use in regular proceedings.
TradingPlaces 3y ago
Obligatory link to The Wire, Season 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1zxPRRf4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1zxPRRf4g
NortySpock 3y ago
I recommend Rusty's Rules of Order as a slimmed down, well-explained version. The rules (both Rusty's and Robert's) are basically a state machine that helps people to run the kind of meetings that create top-down rules and directives for an organization with common ownership (so, a fraternity, sorority, union group, city council, or Parliament) (Google brings up several PDFs if you search for Rusty's Rules of Order)
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Beat me to it. Rusty's rules are very pragmatic advice for running a meeting of people who don't love meetings. I like the link at https://www.iww.org/resources/rustys-rules.pdf https://www.iww.org/resources/rustys-rules.pdf
mmastrac 3y ago
RRoO are useful for organizations that are well-functioning, but can be subject to denial-of-service from bad actors.
- garrickvanburen 3y ago
  I’ve experienced this.
- UtopiaPunk 3y ago
  I get that, and that's a shame. When that happens, then Robert's Rules of Order are functionally no longer being followed. The chair of the meeting has ways of managing bad actors, and the members of the meeting have some tools for overruling the chair if they feel the chair is being out-of-line. But meetings like that are tense, and in my experience, those meetings require someone to act a knowledgeable parliamentarian to let everyone know what is and is not possible in the moment. I recall attending a controversial meeting where the chair was not happy with a sizeable minority of a group that was very interested in discussing a controversial issue. The chair tried to use their position to end the meeting early before the topic could be discussed. In that case, the parliamentarian informed everyone that the chair could not take the action they wanted (ending the meeting) without a vote. The vote did not go the chair's way, and the chair visibly huffed and pouted as the meeting went on against the chair's wishes. That meeting really made me appreciate Robert's Rules.
dragontamer 3y ago
I've been thinking about how modern social networks have turned us ignorant of working together in real life. A lot of people in practice do not talk out decisions anymore. They instead go to the internet, look up other people's arguments, and use that as the basis of their decision-making. In effect, the internet has replaced Robert's Rules of Order as a form of cultural organization. ---------- * Instead of "Everyone has 2 turns to talk per meeting", we have upvotes, like and subscribe for more visibility. * Instead of deciding upon whether an issue is dead and moving on (60%+ vote to kill debate), we have trolls to shout down an argument and get people to leave. * Instead of a chairman trying to balance everyone's need for discussion, we have algorithms and influencers fighting to the top of attention hierarchies. ----------- We don't need Robert's Rules because we can organize a perpetual online discussion on any subject we want. Alas, we've lost something... Parliamentary Theory taught that minorities deserve a discussion (even if they inevitably lose the vote). Forcing everyone to hear the minority's discussion points before voting is fundamental to Robert's Rules. Now Roberts Rules are unwieldy, they're slow. Forcing everyone to sit around and listen to everyone else talk one-at-a-time just doesn't scale to Internet-sizes. But we also can't leave our debates and discussions to online technologies. Yes, "some meetings should be emails". But meetings and conferences (as per Roberts Rules) existed for over a hundred years for a reason. Minority voices matter. The modern internet (Reddit, Youtube, TikTok, etc. etc.) doesn't give a voice to the minority, so everyone constantly is feeling silenced. -------------- Social Networks _have_ made things more convenient. And I think Hacker News proves the importance of moderators to lead discussion (Hacker News is very barebones in terms of social networking features, and instead relies upon the heroic efforts of moderators to keep us on subject). Good discussions need leaders. Roberts Rules were mostly a set of rules for how leaders should lead discussions. A modern version of Roberts Rules would likely be more about how to be a moderator and how to ensure everyone gets a fair shot at the online discussion. But I'm also not convinced that any social network has truly figured out the proper political theories with regards to how discussions to evolve in the online space. Roberts Rules had centuries of inspiration and political theory study, we've only had social media for a few short decades at best.
- creer 3y ago
  Good point on minority being heard. (Really though: "Reddit" doesn't leave minorities heard?) But also we don't use solid rules because we never need to come to a conclusion. Or rather any sub-group online feels free to claim its own conclusion; feels free to ignore most of the conversation; is entitled to run under a BDFL (benevolent dictator for life); etc. And there's no doubt the BDFL concept helps cut down on rules of order...
Digory 3y ago
A lot of “small town” America still runs on Roberts. It’s particularly good in low-trust and high-conflict meetings, where there still needs to be cohesion. School boards, religious groups, community groups, etc. The largest parliamentary meeting in a given year is usually the Southern Baptist Convention, where up to 40,000 people use Roberts at a town hall meeting. They’re a little heavy for a normal corporate team meeting, but those meetings usually can’t survive conflict.
- squirrel6 3y ago
  This is equal parts hilarious and interesting. How did you know about this Baptist meeting? Do you have the minutes?
  - Digory 3y ago
    It’s a bit of denominational lore. The minutes are published every year in a book of annual proceedings. https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/1985-dallas-sbc-a-watershed-moment/ https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/1985-dall...
kragen 3y ago
i see a lot of comments that don't understand what this is for basically robert's rules of order exists to prevent different factions from leaving a meeting with conflicting interpretations of what was decided, or from preventing anything from being decided
ZYXER 3y ago
...WANTED TO POST THAT; BUT THOUGHT IT WOULD BE CONSIDERED "REDUNDANT"!
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
Robert's Rules of Order is great for making decisions collectively when there's more than a small handful of people involved. Rusty's Rules of Order (thanks IWW!). I also have experience with another system called Sociocracy, which is both a structure for holding meetings as well as a neat structure for organizing decision making authority in a decentralized way among people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy I've used these methods in non-profits, political party meetings, churches, and political activitist groups. However, I've never actually used these in the workplace! The key difference, I imagine, is in in my workplaces, there has always been a single individual or a couple individuals who clearly have the decision-making authority. They make ask for input from a wider group of people, but at the end of the day, they don't care if everyone's voice is heard, they just to make some kind of choice. Outside of the work I do for money, the other projects I'm drawn to are democratic.
lcall 3y ago
There is a freely older readable older version, and some helpful books on Robert's Rules, at archive.org. Also there is a web site (findable with a search) that has an html version (https://robertsrules.com/ https://robertsrules.com/). ps: In reading some of the above I learned that there are informal ways to manage a meeting, so it doesn't have to be stiff and formal all the time. But the formality can be used as soon as it is needed. (Haven't yet had practice with it though, unlike some other commenters here.)
- lcall 3y ago
  pps: Wikipedia reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberts_Rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberts_Rules Another interesting wikipedia page is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus ...which discusses other methods that might be useful in different situations. It seems more focused on getting a larger consensus than just the majority, refining proposals until more people agree, as opposed to coming to a majority decision with efficiency; and it might be suited to larger, even outdoor groups. Yet another approach is that used by councils in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which work well in a setting of unity and general agreement on goals, beliefs, and principles: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/4-leadership-in-the-church-of-jesus-christ?lang=eng#title_number13 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-han...
westurner 3y ago
From "Free and Open Source Governance" https://fossgovernance.org/ https://fossgovernance.org/ : > An indexed collection of governance documents from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects. > FOSS Governance Zotero Collection: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2310183/foss_governance/item-list https://www.zotero.org/groups/2310183/foss_governance/item-l... Open-source governance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance Communication in distributed software development > Forms of communication > Synchronous, Asynchronous, Hybrid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_in_distributed_software_development#Forms_of_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_in_distributed_s...

49 points by larve 3y ago

esafak 3y ago

Does anybody use these at work?

TurkishPoptart 3y ago
We use these for monthly meetings of a non-profit (very small, only 6 board members)
scottyah 3y ago
I held the position that enforces these rules while in college, so I've gotten some familiarity with them. I do not recommend them for work, they are too strict and are designed to prevent anyone from speaking up, which is typically the opposite of what you want in most small groups at work. They are great for keeping a bunch of people from talking over each other. Like any formal education, it is great to have learned the methodologies and be able to apply parts of it in the situations that require it, like when there's one coworker that cuts people off too often.
- patmorgan23 3y ago
  Roberts rules are Felixable. They're a good set of defaults or at least take inspiration from once you get past 5-10 people. Every organization/group is different, if they need rules for their meetings they need to be tailored for that group.
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  > they are too strict and are designed to prevent anyone from speaking up, which is typically the opposite of what you want in most small groups at work Agreed. Generally speaking, the more people are involved in something, the more benefit there is to a formal structure. As I mentioned in another comment, there are still things that can be learned from RRO that might be helpful in a professional setting, but generally speaking it's just way too much.
laserbeam 3y ago
I wish I did... I'm having a hard time convincing anyone they are worth it. I've had a positive experience with them in Toastmasters (public speaking club). There is a time and place for them. In my experience, the biggest benefits are: - they force a group to define what is being voted on (via ammendments) - they separate debating from voting - they make it clear when a decision has been made and it's time to apply it If you're stuck kicking the can on plans and decisions, it may be worth implementing a version of these rules.
jabroni_salad 3y ago
They are useful for committees but not really for project groups. I introduced some of it to our CAB, and it works in the sense that the CAB is just a soft machine that approves or rejects changes. Everything stays on the rails and we are done in time for lunch.
DaveFlater 3y ago
I participated in several standards organizations that used Robert's Rules. They were FAR more effective at getting stuff done than the other organizations I've been involved with. The key contribution of Robert's Rules is right in the name: order. Everyone has a chance to speak, but in an orderly fashion. No shouting down. And when enough has been said, you vote on it and move on. One party who refuses to cooperate cannot hold the proceedings hostage forever.
dragontamer 3y ago
The core principles of Robert's Rules are 100% applicable to work. Its about understanding the "reasons" behind the rules, rather than the rules themselves. 1. Roberts Rules states that the #1 order of business at every meeting is a vote on the prior-meeting's minutes. The written record is king in Robert's rules. In an office environment, this means that any meeting that must "exist" must be written down and secondly (this is _VERY_ important), all stakeholders in the decision need written acknowledgement that the written-record is correct. Consider ISSUE#55, a hypothetical programming feature that should be implemented before version 3.55 of the computer program you're writing. A meeting occurred on January 5th saying Issue#55 needs to fix the GUI to accept usernames of length 20, but not of length 5. Writing down these issues is not enough or sufficient. The most important part of this "issue" is the signoff: all people of the meeting (developers, product managers, customers if possible) should be on the email saying "Yes, Issue#55 as written in Jira is an appropriate summary of what we want, and the feature you want to program is a good idea". Because come 5 months from now when crap happens, we all know everyone's going to point fingers at each other and blame each other. Having an appropriate signoff is as important (if not more important) than the written documentation. So again: Robert's rules on "Agree to the secretary's meeting summary of the last meeting" is HUGELY important, in practice. But you gotta "see" what that really means in your office environment. ---------- Etc. etc. etc. Every other rule exists for a reason in Robert's rules. Minority talking point. Ability to filibuster and shut down debate by filling the space with crap (and how to avoid the Filibuster through time-requirements or other such features). The 2-times-to-talk per issue helps prevent nonsensical loops. Give people a point, and then one opportunity for a counterpoint, and that's enough for most situations. Let dead issues stay dead. Do not allow people to drudge up old issues and distract. Etc. etc. All of Roberts Rules are rules of this nature, but they don't say the "why", instead they're just written as dry "10 minutes per discussion point, 2-times to talk per issue", style because all the rules are so numerous. Its very more important to learn the "spirit of the law" and the reasons why parliamentary theory exists.

martinky24 3y ago

These days this exists just for frat boys. They love it.

Ancapistani 3y ago
FFA uses it for their meetings, and even have parliamentary procedure competitions. Weirdly, I've found it to be a lot more useful as an adult than I'd have guessed. It's rare to actually need to know how to run a formal business meeting, but the time I spent back then learning about the procedures, their history, and why the rules were structured in the way they are has paid off. I've had several situations where a meeting at work had devolved into a very low-level discussion of just one of the things that we needed to address. If that goes on too long, I typically interrupt and suggest that the people involved in the discussion set up a time to get together later, hash out the details, then come back with the results at our next meeting. The key is to then explicitly designate one person to be responsible for organizing that and reporting back. I've had great success with that approach, and while I've never used the term "committee"... that's exactly what it is. Setting an agenda for a meeting ahead of time is super helpful. Taking notes to share is too. If you do that, bring those notes to the next meeting and as people start arriving read them back and ask if you missed anything. Soon people will start expecting that, and your meetings will be much more focused and productive. Congratulations - you're now the de facto secretary of your group, and each time you meet you're reading back the minutes of the previous meeting. Your meetings end up starting on time, you spend less time with pleasantries and such every time as people arrive late, and people actually know WTF is going on as soon as you start. IMO, there is a lot to learn from the structured ways we did things in the past. They were set up that way for a reason. We may not call it the same thing these days or have a rule book sitting next to us for every meeting... but that doesn't mean there's no value to learning about the "old ways" and implementing the parts that make sense.
codingdave 3y ago
You should attend some school board or city council meetings to see how widespread its usage really is.
squirrel6 3y ago
Other have mentioned Rusty’s rules; in either case (Robert or Rusty’s version) the basic mechanics of parliamentary procedure are a useful framework. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a single organization where more than a few rules or basic principles are in active use in regular proceedings.

TradingPlaces 3y ago

Obligatory link to The Wire, Season 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1zxPRRf4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1zxPRRf4g

NortySpock 3y ago

I recommend Rusty's Rules of Order as a slimmed down, well-explained version. The rules (both Rusty's and Robert's) are basically a state machine that helps people to run the kind of meetings that create top-down rules and directives for an organization with common ownership (so, a fraternity, sorority, union group, city council, or Parliament) (Google brings up several PDFs if you search for Rusty's Rules of Order)

kstrauser 3y ago
Beat me to it. Rusty's rules are very pragmatic advice for running a meeting of people who don't love meetings. I like the link at https://www.iww.org/resources/rustys-rules.pdf https://www.iww.org/resources/rustys-rules.pdf

mmastrac 3y ago

RRoO are useful for organizations that are well-functioning, but can be subject to denial-of-service from bad actors.

garrickvanburen 3y ago
I’ve experienced this.
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
I get that, and that's a shame. When that happens, then Robert's Rules of Order are functionally no longer being followed. The chair of the meeting has ways of managing bad actors, and the members of the meeting have some tools for overruling the chair if they feel the chair is being out-of-line. But meetings like that are tense, and in my experience, those meetings require someone to act a knowledgeable parliamentarian to let everyone know what is and is not possible in the moment. I recall attending a controversial meeting where the chair was not happy with a sizeable minority of a group that was very interested in discussing a controversial issue. The chair tried to use their position to end the meeting early before the topic could be discussed. In that case, the parliamentarian informed everyone that the chair could not take the action they wanted (ending the meeting) without a vote. The vote did not go the chair's way, and the chair visibly huffed and pouted as the meeting went on against the chair's wishes. That meeting really made me appreciate Robert's Rules.

dragontamer 3y ago

I've been thinking about how modern social networks have turned us ignorant of working together in real life. A lot of people in practice do not talk out decisions anymore. They instead go to the internet, look up other people's arguments, and use that as the basis of their decision-making. In effect, the internet has replaced Robert's Rules of Order as a form of cultural organization. ---------- * Instead of "Everyone has 2 turns to talk per meeting", we have upvotes, like and subscribe for more visibility. * Instead of deciding upon whether an issue is dead and moving on (60%+ vote to kill debate), we have trolls to shout down an argument and get people to leave. * Instead of a chairman trying to balance everyone's need for discussion, we have algorithms and influencers fighting to the top of attention hierarchies. ----------- We don't need Robert's Rules because we can organize a perpetual online discussion on any subject we want. Alas, we've lost something... Parliamentary Theory taught that minorities deserve a discussion (even if they inevitably lose the vote). Forcing everyone to hear the minority's discussion points before voting is fundamental to Robert's Rules. Now Roberts Rules are unwieldy, they're slow. Forcing everyone to sit around and listen to everyone else talk one-at-a-time just doesn't scale to Internet-sizes. But we also can't leave our debates and discussions to online technologies. Yes, "some meetings should be emails". But meetings and conferences (as per Roberts Rules) existed for over a hundred years for a reason. Minority voices matter. The modern internet (Reddit, Youtube, TikTok, etc. etc.) doesn't give a voice to the minority, so everyone constantly is feeling silenced. -------------- Social Networks _have_ made things more convenient. And I think Hacker News proves the importance of moderators to lead discussion (Hacker News is very barebones in terms of social networking features, and instead relies upon the heroic efforts of moderators to keep us on subject). Good discussions need leaders. Roberts Rules were mostly a set of rules for how leaders should lead discussions. A modern version of Roberts Rules would likely be more about how to be a moderator and how to ensure everyone gets a fair shot at the online discussion. But I'm also not convinced that any social network has truly figured out the proper political theories with regards to how discussions to evolve in the online space. Roberts Rules had centuries of inspiration and political theory study, we've only had social media for a few short decades at best.

creer 3y ago
Good point on minority being heard. (Really though: "Reddit" doesn't leave minorities heard?) But also we don't use solid rules because we never need to come to a conclusion. Or rather any sub-group online feels free to claim its own conclusion; feels free to ignore most of the conversation; is entitled to run under a BDFL (benevolent dictator for life); etc. And there's no doubt the BDFL concept helps cut down on rules of order...

Digory 3y ago

A lot of “small town” America still runs on Roberts. It’s particularly good in low-trust and high-conflict meetings, where there still needs to be cohesion. School boards, religious groups, community groups, etc. The largest parliamentary meeting in a given year is usually the Southern Baptist Convention, where up to 40,000 people use Roberts at a town hall meeting. They’re a little heavy for a normal corporate team meeting, but those meetings usually can’t survive conflict.

squirrel6 3y ago
This is equal parts hilarious and interesting. How did you know about this Baptist meeting? Do you have the minutes?
- Digory 3y ago
  It’s a bit of denominational lore. The minutes are published every year in a book of annual proceedings. https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/1985-dallas-sbc-a-watershed-moment/ https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/1985-dall...

kragen 3y ago

i see a lot of comments that don't understand what this is for basically robert's rules of order exists to prevent different factions from leaving a meeting with conflicting interpretations of what was decided, or from preventing anything from being decided

ZYXER 3y ago

...WANTED TO POST THAT; BUT THOUGHT IT WOULD BE CONSIDERED "REDUNDANT"!

UtopiaPunk 3y ago

Robert's Rules of Order is great for making decisions collectively when there's more than a small handful of people involved. Rusty's Rules of Order (thanks IWW!). I also have experience with another system called Sociocracy, which is both a structure for holding meetings as well as a neat structure for organizing decision making authority in a decentralized way among people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy I've used these methods in non-profits, political party meetings, churches, and political activitist groups. However, I've never actually used these in the workplace! The key difference, I imagine, is in in my workplaces, there has always been a single individual or a couple individuals who clearly have the decision-making authority. They make ask for input from a wider group of people, but at the end of the day, they don't care if everyone's voice is heard, they just to make some kind of choice. Outside of the work I do for money, the other projects I'm drawn to are democratic.

lcall 3y ago

There is a freely older readable older version, and some helpful books on Robert's Rules, at archive.org. Also there is a web site (findable with a search) that has an html version (https://robertsrules.com/ https://robertsrules.com/). ps: In reading some of the above I learned that there are informal ways to manage a meeting, so it doesn't have to be stiff and formal all the time. But the formality can be used as soon as it is needed. (Haven't yet had practice with it though, unlike some other commenters here.)

lcall 3y ago
pps: Wikipedia reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberts_Rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberts_Rules Another interesting wikipedia page is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus ...which discusses other methods that might be useful in different situations. It seems more focused on getting a larger consensus than just the majority, refining proposals until more people agree, as opposed to coming to a majority decision with efficiency; and it might be suited to larger, even outdoor groups. Yet another approach is that used by councils in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which work well in a setting of unity and general agreement on goals, beliefs, and principles: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/4-leadership-in-the-church-of-jesus-christ?lang=eng#title_number13 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-han...

westurner 3y ago

From "Free and Open Source Governance" https://fossgovernance.org/ https://fossgovernance.org/ : > An indexed collection of governance documents from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects. > FOSS Governance Zotero Collection: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2310183/foss_governance/item-list https://www.zotero.org/groups/2310183/foss_governance/item-l... Open-source governance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance Communication in distributed software development > Forms of communication > Synchronous, Asynchronous, Hybrid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_in_distributed_software_development#Forms_of_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_in_distributed_s...