What is your ‘Best Alternative to Coming Meeting Arrangement (BACMA)?

Members of a flock come together in a meeting to deliberate on a documented agenda.

Meeting are a meeting point of diverse people and thoughts

A meeting may fulfil one or more objectives.?While the written objectives are reflected in the agenda, the unwritten objectives are reflected by who participates and in what ways and how often.

By participating in routine meetings, one gets to know more about the culture of an organisation

One also gets to know whether the organisation is progressing on its own or there are disciplined efforts to steer it in a better direction.

The following paragraphs bring forth the different states each member of the flock goes through during a meeting. Each member may occupy one or more states as mentioned below. The explanations are mainly for differentiating the predominant role played by a member.

Roles members play may change with changes in an organisation structure?

Sitter?

This is the default state of all members of a flock other than the decider. A sitter may sit with the core group or outside the core group when a meeting takes place. A sitter tries to be physically present in all the meetings he/she is called to attend. Some sitters are seen to attend meetings with a goal of reinforcing personal stature and influence in the sitter's as well as other’s work areas.

In some cases, a decider may make it mandatory for ALL sitters to attend each of his/her meetings irrespective of whether they have any value to contribute or not.?

Decider

The person who chairs any meeting of the flock. When a more senior member enters during the meeting , he/she becomes the new decider during the time he/she is present in the meeting. When the senior most flock member leaves the meeting, the next seniormost level becomes the decider.

In some cases, sitters learn and replicate the mannerisms of the decider(s) in their work areas. A decider influences how much time a sitter can spend in his/her work area by deciding on the timing and durations of each of the meetings.?

You cannot be on the wrong side of the decider.?

Voicer

A voicer adds opinionated and/or experiential flavours and makes a meeting lively. A voicer may present one’s work or share opinions on another's work. There may be one or more voicers in any meeting.There are required to be managed closely as they have potential to take conversations in any direction.

Good voicers align the flocks to common purpose or agenda of meeting

Unbridled voicers have potential to bring all the pre-meeting activities to abrupt pause or end

Voicers can also be contributors. It is not uncommon to see them as spending significant time as distractors and time wasters.

Decider’s vary in their understanding and management of the voicer(s).

The behaviour and actions of deciders in pre-meeting, in-meeting and post-meeting activities and events reflect their leadership traits

Deciders influence the transformation of flock members from voicers to contributors and vice versa.A decider may also play the role of voicer for some or significant duration of a meeting.

Range extender

They act as a bridge between the sitters and the deciders. They bring more clarity to the views of the nearby sitters for the decider. Sometimes may add some of their own views to the sitter’s views during the process of extending the range.

Range extenders may be peers or superiors of sitters.

Deciders can encourage sitters to be voicers thereby reducing the need for range extenders.

Contributor

A contributor does the main work which is to be discussed during a meeting. As per the need, he/she gathers information from diverse sources, compiles them, makes presentations and multiple hard copies for the meeting members. A contributor may be asked to demonstrate the results in real time.

Each institution looks and treats its contributors in different ways

A contributor may be asked to present himself/herself or educate the superior (voicer/range extender) to present . In cases where a voicer is presenting, the role of the contributor may sometimes be limited to setting up the laptop and project for the meeting and clicking the mouse on hearing ‘next’.

A decider may or may not know the contributor and may leave the things to the voicer to do as needed.

A contributor may play the role of a sitter until needed as per meeting agenda

Deciders with leadership traits do not forget contributors after a meeting is over. They encourage them , provide resources and showcase them for other to emulate.?

Exceptional leadership is about boosting the contributors and removing constraints from their paths

As individuals move within and across organisations, they adapt to needs of the organisational systems.

Deciders influence and promote systems as being person-dependent or system-dependent?

The time and efforts put in during pre-meeting activities has a significant impact on outcomes of the meetings. There is an opportunity cost for not doing activities in one’ work area for the time spent in the meetings. By attending ten meetings of a flock, one can get a fair idea of ‘what matters’ and ‘who matters’ in a flock irrespective of the agenda of the meeting.

When flocks bring deciders from similar domains, they encourage similar perspectives and standard practices.??

When flocks bring deciders from multiple domains based upon the applicability of their skillsets, they promote cross-pollination of ideas and open up relatively? more possibilities.

Learn in meetings

Learn from meetings

Do try to observe your meetings next time more closely and get to know the members of flocks as sitters, voicers, range extenders, contributors and deciders.

When you are a decider, you have an additional responsibility to know your BACMA and ORICMA

What is discussed in the meetings gives a fair idea on the direction and speed of organisation growth and development.

BACMA and ORICMA can aid is coducting meetings only whenever it seems necessary and with more of members who can participate as contributors.