[Nokinside]

Requiring proposals and updates written down is a good idea. If you allow people to bring up an issue or proposal that they have not already written up in the meeting, someone always comes up with idea on the spot, and tries argue it as something well thought. If they are clever people they can throw the whole meeting off.

For the loudest voice in the room problem, speaking order that starts from the most junior and ends with the most senior member is the best (I think it's sometimes used in military). When junior members speak first it's easier for them when the boss has not given his opinion.

[adreamingsoul]

The junior to senior ordering makes so much sense. I didn't realize it until now how affective it is, and how I try to always encourage that in my teams.

How do you handle situations when you see a need for this but don't want to step on the toes of others? From my experience, some people react poorly to hearing that type of feedback or approach, and while I try my best to avoid those working environments it does happen from time to time. In those situations, I try to encourage, inspire, and explain why it's important.

[eksemplar]

The opening opinion in a discussion is almost always the hardest to come by, so you’ll want someone confident with having a bad idea sink in public to make it, and that is almost never your junior employees.

If you need a junior to senior round, to make sure your juniors speak their own opinion, you frankly have really big issues in my eyes.

The key is to make an environment where people will share ideas and work on improving them as a team or a unit regardless of their status/position. At least if that is your goal.

You do this by using honesty, assertion and openness. If there are parts of the decision making that aren’t up for discussion, then you make sure everyone understands that and then you let them discuss the rest while making sure everyone understands that being polite and affirming is required for good team work, even if someone thinks an idea or opinion is bad.

I realize tech companies are notoriously bad at this. The army reference, and the fact that it’s getting any sort of traction here is a good example of this. The junior to senior strategy makes a lot of sense in the army, but that is an environment where you own 100% of the decision making as a XO, and you’re not using the method to make a decision, because you’ve already made it, you are simply asking your crew for opinions to make sure there isn’t an angle you have missed. Not only that, but you’ll often be asking people who come from different teams and may not know each other very well, in an environment where you’re under a lot of pressure. That’s almost the exact opposite of what you are doing in any private sector meeting.

If you’re a CEO who’ve gathered all your middle managers to figure out how to trim the staff by 20%, by all means go junior to senior, but if you’re trying to brainstorm something with a team of developers, just don’t.

Disclaimer: I’m Scandinavian, management may be more authoritative in America than it is here.

[adreamingsoul]

Scandinavian's are good at building things, but I may also biased because my great-grandparents are from Finland and I'm proud to have that heritage in my family.

[EGreg]

The Jewish Sanhedrin used it 2000-3000 years ago, starting from the most junior people.

[taneq]

Some good psychology in that. If you start with the most senior people, then the couple of people who are clearly officially leaders will talk and then everyone else thinks they're next in the pecking order and will trainwreck it.

If the only way to talk is to admit that you're more junior than everyone else who hasn't spoken, then you won't stick your two bob in unless you actually have something important to say.

[sp332]

Or the most senior people will put an idea forward and all the juniors will spend their time kissing ass and saying what a great idea it is.

[kolpa]

It's the seniors' job to seek out criticism and lead the way to criticizing their own ideas.

[bytematic]

Interesting, I never thought about the merits. Rome would have a very different history if they did this, I would love to know that alternative

[slededit]

If you are just an employee and your company hasn't employed this you can do it on your own. Simply build a consensus by meeting people 1:1 before the meeting. When you do this you are no longer as dependent on your in-meeting performance.

[beambot]

So 10x 1:1s plus a discussion meeting plus a decision meeting... Sounds like a slippery slope to meeting hell.

[slededit]

You can usually skip the discussion meeting if you do the 1:1s, and your design/plan will be much better as the discussion can be deeper in 1:1s. I've been a in a huge number of design reviews where a massive flaw is pointed out and the reply is "well we'd love to talk more about it but we won't get over everything if we do...", and the meeting continues discussing the details of a plan we just showed won't actually work. You are also playing with the human dynamics of not wanting to look bad in front of a lot of people. Large discussion meetings are usually a waste of time and result in sub par plans.

As an IC you play with the rules you've got.

[karthikb]

Yeah...at a startup, doing this many 1:1s doesn't make too much sense. Doing a bunch of 1:1 to get people going the same direction means they weren't already in the same direction...means you're burning resources. At BigCo it makes perfect sense since there's 1000 things going on and no one cares about your thing until you show them why.

(hi!)