Systemic Delegated Processes in Management
A Systemic Team and Organization Development Coaching Tool

This article presents an organization development and coaching approach experimented and developed over 15 years within different types of teams, in numerous business environments, on different corporate levels and in a variety of countries and multicultural settings.  We have called it the Delegated Processes.

After some contextual considerations, we will first focus our presentation on the practical aspects of the Delegated Processes as these specifically apply to organizing and running efficient meetings .  Later in this article, we will offer general comments on how the Delegated Processes serve to modify hidden organizational achitectures, how they permit rapid management-development, multi-national and organization development, and how they can be central in team coaching and organization coaching.

It may surprise the reader that we are presenting here a meeting process as an organization development or cross-cultural management and coaching tool.  The surprise may build even more.  The toolbox presented below can also have a general effect in modifying organization culture and can definitely be considered as an extremely efficient means for better team management and leadership development. 

As no one tool is a universal panacea, we consider the Delegated Processes to be especially useful in a specific context.  Although the process in general and some parts of it may be useful in organizing and running any kind of meeting or reunion, we suggest careful consideration of the meeting structure and objectives prior to using it or expecting significant results.

• First, a communication or management tool is often neither good nor bad, efficient or inefficient in itself. 

The way it is taught and learned, the context or environment in which it is used, the attitude of the people who use it all have a huge effect on both the short term and long term outcome or results.  Much as with Participative Management by Objectives (MBO), Quality Circles, 360° evaluations, Re-engineering, etc., the way we implement tools sometimes has more influence on the quality of the results than the tool itself

• Second, the Delegated Processes are particularly tailored to develop efficiency within intact teams meetings. 

This is especially the case within regularly scheduled executive team monthly or quarterly meetings, during any specific system’s regular weekly or bi-monthly meeting.  The Delegated Processes tool is therefore most efficiently used on a regular basis in teams of five to fifteen persons that include no more than the team or network : the leader and all direct reports.

Conversely, the Delegated Processes tool is less necessary or less efficient when used in “crisis-centered” or exceptional meetings that convene on an irregular or short term basis and include relative strangers coming from disparate origins, mixing numerous hierarchical levels and organizational contexts.

It is neither useful nor efficient in very large meetings that include participants or an “audience” originating from several levels of an organization, in conventions, in informational presentations to large groups, etc.

• Third the Delegated Processes are most useful in meetings centered on decision making.

We have witnessed that the Delegated Processes are especially efficient in teams which want their meetings to be intensely focused on well-prepared issues, well driven debates and powerful decision making. 

The Delegated Processes will bring less satisfactory results if a team revels in “podium” type meetings structured by one-way speaker-to-audience messages, or centered on informative presentations through overhead projectors and slides or “PowerPoint” deliveries.  These information-centered meetings may not be the best context for deploying Delegated Processes.  In general, as a matter of fact, we have not witnessed that an intense use of structured «informational» meetings serve dynamic organizations very well.

For a more in-depth analysis and other general reflections on meeting processes and how these may reflect team “profiles”, promote or stifle efficiency and characterize organizational culture we refer the reader to an introductory article entitled “Circularity“ on this same web-site.

Suffice it to say here that the Delegated Processes are specially useful when the organizational context in general and top management in particular is very actively and measurably engaged in developing employee and mid-management empowerment, committed to a participative approach which includes real consulting and delegation processes.  It works best in a result-oriented, reactive, risk-taking, entrepreneurial corporate culture, or in a context which wishes to develop it.

As a matter of fact, the Delegated Processes are an active and efficient tool to develop the above type of organization culture, and may be considered counter-productive if management is blatantly behaving in ways hixh could be perceived as withholding information, centralizing and controlling, risk-fearing, and generally conservative.

• Fourth, the Delegated Processes have been developed as a “systemic” developmental tool and gains in being used as such. 

It is “systemic” in that it rests on the premise that meetings are central in organizations and teams much in the same way as the nucleus is central in a biological cell.  Modifying team meeting processes and results will modify all that team’s processes and results.  Modifying an executive team’s meeting processes and results can eventually modify the whole organization’s processes and results.  By acting on the system’s DNA, we are acting on the general system’s genetics and therefore on all its processes, identity and ultimate outcome or results.

The Delegated Processes tool is “systemic” in that it primarily aims to influence or modify interactions between people rather than change the people themselves.  The tool is focused on relationships rather than personalities, on interfaces in general rather than entities such as departments, territories, fields, subjects and specialties.

In this context, it is an excellent tool to develop transversal cooperation in a team and collective ownership for an organization’s results.  A large number of managers want to avoid meetings in as much as many of them are time wasters.  As a result, they would rather deal with problems in a one-on-one situation rather than collectively.  This avoidance solution contributes to the breakdown of transversal cooperation in organizations and teams.  The Delegated Processes tool is an answer to running team meetings efficiently to develop collective efficiency and results in systems. 

The Delegated Processes tool is also systemic in that it can gradually develop or spread throughout a given corporate environment.  It is expected that once the tool is well implemented within one team on any level of an organization, the members of that team can individually spread the process to other teams, meetings and levels and gradually influence the way meetings are run in the whole system.  Consequently, the tool can and should be spread in a sort of “viral” mode throughout the organization.

Careful consideration can be given to preparing a meeting.  Often, a precisely timed agenda is prepared and distributed to all participant prior to a meeting, sometimes accompanied documents to be sure each is well informed.  All this preparation, however is focused on meeting content and not on interactive processes during the meeting.  Surprizingly, for no matter the  meeting content and its preparation, processes during a meeting have a huge influence on organizational culture and results.

A well-prepared and well-run meeting can be totally timed and controlled by the system’s boss to reach a series of very well prepared and defined decisions.  This may be immediately efficient but will re-enforce long term organizational centralization, control, and general dis-empowerment if the other meeting members are kept out of the preparation loop and limit their participation to just being good listeners during the meeting.

A very participative open meeting format can favor exchanges, discussion, debate, dialogue and consensus-reaching.  This will probably develop the individual commitment of team members but may be time-consuming, generally affect the reactivity of the system and ultimately lead it to underestimate urgency or emergency situations.

Well-prepared meetings crammed with over-head projected slides and “PowerPoint” informational content may gradually limit a system to a series of long and boring show-and-tell rituals focused on explanations and analysis, having little to do with real future-oriented challenges and results-driven decisions and action.

Creative high-energy and intellectually challenging or stimulating brain-storming or arguing marathons may sometimes lack that real down-to earth focus on one or two key obvious back-to-basics actions that just need professional structured long-term implementation and follow up.

To conclude, after observing one or two meetings in a team, and no matter the professionalism of its content, the commitment of the participants, it is often possible to extrapolate from its processes some of that team’s basic cultural or behavioral shortcomings and by extension, its organization’s limits.

So as a general rule, if people may be often focused on a meeting’s content and results to justify its utility, we will temporarily also suggest to take a close look at its processes, review the ones that need to be modified and make the necessary team decisions for change.

The ultimate function of a system’s meetings, as we have stated it above, is to permit collective decisions making so as to drive collective action and results.  This will develop transversal teamwork, cooperation and collective ownership of organization processes and results.

This decision-making function typically places the official system’s decision-maker, the boss, in a central position in the system and therefore, unconsciously, in the entire meeting’s processes.  The decision-maker becomes not only responsible for making or validating decisions, but for all of the system processes.

As a result, we have often alternatively witnessed team leaders or decision-makers host and organize “their” meetings, and actively participate in the preparation before, the content during and the follow-up after their system’s meetings.  More often than not, the decision-maker has become the central driving force in all of his or her team’s processes.

Typically, the team leader may also moderate, keep track of time, push for decisions, refocus the content, follow up on the minutes, confront and drive the other team members, set deadlines, comment on individual poor preparation and participation and generally carry the responsibility for the whole process.

This type of de-facto one-man-show process may lead observers to justifiably conclude that if the leader cannot make it to any one team meeting, it may as well be postponed or cancelled.  This is surprisingly and unfortunately very often the case in numerous systems.

Ironically, this process can be witnessed in a large number of organizations that very blatantly post and pay lip service to cultural statements underlining their in-depth commitment to empowerment, delegation, sharing of responsibilities and other buzz-words.

To get organizations to walk their talk, we first suggest that teams rather than leaders become decision driven, and that specifically tailored team meeting tools such as roles and processes help them get there.

To do this, all meeting processes need to be delegated to the team as a system, and to each of its members taken individually.  This is the one main objective of the Delegated Processes tool.

Again, the delegation of all meeting processes to the team members during a meeting is an intermediate step that ultimately aims to modify the general culture or collective operational frame of reference of the team. 

Indeed, in as much as a meeting is only a partial microcosm of a team’s reality, implementing a delegation process during a meeting primarily aims to promote a general modification of the team’s total delegation processes outside of the meeting.  In this sense, delegation during a meeting is not a goal in itself but a means to promote a change in the delegation processes in all the team’s realities, before and after meetings.

The one function that a decision-maker cannot totally delegate is that of making decisions.  Implicitly or explicitly, the decision-maker is expected to either make or validate all the decisions made within the team or by each one of its members.  As in any executive branch of any organization, this ultimate responsibility covers all decisions and actions made by the system for which the decision-maker is responsible.

From this basic principle can be deduced the fact that if the decision-maker does not necessarily explicitly make all the decisions, he or she is just ultimately responsible for them and their effects.  This validation principle implies that the decision-maker is necessarily informed of all decisions, whether or not these are in fact delegated or not.

Beyond the absolute necessity to be informed, the decision-maker can and ultimately should be in a position to delegate all the other meeting functions mentioned above. The functions we will develop are the ones focused on meeting participation and moderation, time-keeping and pacing, decision driving and follow-up, process coaching, meeting preparation and hosting.

Of course, depending on specific team needs, other functions can and sometimes should be developed.

With this frame of reference in mind, it is of the utmost importance to underline that the ultimate objective is to delegate the decision making process to the team as a whole.  Indeed, if the team as a system is to become action-driven or results oriented, it is to collectively process information during meetings to the point of making its own decisions whether or not the decision maker is present at the time these are made (so long as he or she is immediately informed).

When this process is installed in a team, one can truthfully say that an empowerment process is actually taking place in a delegated context, where the responsibility for actions and results are really taken by the team rather than by its leader.

To delegate the meeting functions we propose the following specific roles focused on precise managerial competence.  Each one of these roles can or should be carried out by one of the team members in turn.

• The first role to be delegated is the moderator or facilitator. 

The facilitator’s responsibility is to ensure a good management of the team’s energy during the meeting.  The best metaphor for this role is that of an orchestra conductor’s role, leading a musical group’s collective expression. 

The facilitator, like a conductor should be facing the group rather be than part of it, often standing rather than statically sitting, and using his or her body expression and movements to give a rhythm to the work at hand.  “Baton” movements such as hand gestures, eye contact with specific participants, movements towards or away from the group, varying facial expressions and the judicious use of a paperboard are all visual aids to driving participation, energy and pace.

The facilitator-conductor also has in mind to keep all participants playing variations on the expected music, keeping them focused on the subject at hand.  Managing good interfaces between participants, limiting interruptions, keeping each in their rightful place or “equal” or respectful participation could also be considered part of his or her role.

Of course, the facilitator should also input his or her personal ideas without becoming the main participant and get too involved with personal input to the extent of “hogging” the show. In a way, the conductor is first at the service of the orchestra.  Choosing when to lead, and when to let go, when to be central and when to let others become more active, when to be firm and when to be soft in quick and easy changes of pace and posture can also keep the movement dynamic and everyone involved.

The facilitator can be helped in the task of driving the meeting by two other active meeting roles: the pacer and the decision driver.  When the facilitator gets indications from either of these as to the management of time or of decisions, it is useful to work with these indications and persons, for the sake of better meeting efficiency.  In a way, these two roles could be considered the main helpers to being a good facilitator.

• The second role to be delegated is the decision-driver.

This role’s responsibility is to be constantly and actively focused first on provoking and then on recording decisions.

Provoking decisions consists in regularly and judiciously pushing the group to focus on formulating decisions. Typical interventions could be for instance “are we nearing a decision?” “Could we focus on making a decision now?” “How can we formulate this into a clear decision?” “We are changing subjects without having made a decision on the previous issue”, etc.

In clarifying decisions, the decision driver will also ensure that these are clearly defined and measurable, that the deadlines are discussed and set, and that the responsibility for carrying or piloting out these decisions or for monitoring or tracking them is precise.

In short, the decision driver is making sure that the group or team has a clear understanding that action will be taken in the proper direction and at the right time.
During the meeting, this role is a form of “decision-punctuator” in that it relentlessly drives the group from decision to decision.

Recording decisions, the second function of the decision driver, consists in writing on legal-size paper (or typing on an EXEL worksheet), as specifically as possible, the group’s decisions.  These must include specific measurable responsibilities for actions within deadlines.

This record should be written on a prepared form or chart that remains similar from meeting to meeting.  A general and simplified format we often suggest may have the following headings and appearance:

Once this form is completely filled, the decision driver should immediately photocopy it and distribute it (or e-mail it), giving each participant an immediate and complete record of all the decisions, at departure from the meeting.

In the pilot column, the decision driver will record the name of the person responsible for the follow up of the decision.  Specific responsibilities are individual (i.e. only one person can be responsible for any given action or for monitoring a collective action).  We have indeed noticed that when more than one person is responsible for an action, no one really feels responsible for it.  If you don’t want to get something done, delegate it to a group.

Decisions should define actions and therefore must be entered in a precise and measurable way rather than in vague or philosophical terms. We have noticed that being “legalist” about goals, writing them down in specific, observable and measurable terms, in complete sentences with all necessary details, makes them more real and permits better commitment to making them happen.

Deadlines must be specifically dated, and these often gain in being as short-term as possible to create a sense of urgency.  We have noticed that when deadlines are too far off, people and teams may be buying time, the actions are forgotten, and the goals never reached.  It’s like “I’ll stop smoking next year”.  Tomorrow is better, right now is best.

All in all, the decision driver role is central in keeping a team meeting focused on it’s main measure for collective efficiency: clear-cut, recorded and measurable decisions that are going to make a real change on the team’s future reality.

• The third role to be delegated is the pacer.

This function consists in helping the team pace itself in whatever time allotments it has chosen.  For instance if a meeting sequence is to last for 30 minutes the pacer can intervene to signal the passing of every ten minutes and announce the last five. Typically, this consists in clearly and loudly announcing to all the time spent and the time left in the collective contract, for instance, “we have just used ten minutes out of our twenty-five minute allotment”. 

If the team were to run overtime, the role consists in announcing just that, every five minutes, for instance: “we now are ten minutes overtime on our thirty minute contract”.

Time lapses for pacing should be equal for most of the allotment except maybe for the last ten minutes, and should be at most every ten minutes.

The function for the pacer is to help keep the whole team totally focused on the work at hand during the whole sequence, so as to avoid the usual time waste in the first three quarters of the meeting and time rush in the last quarter. 

Remember that the pacer is not responsible to be a “cop” on the time issue pressing the group to hurry or stopping it when time is out.  Poor time management is not the pacer’s responsibility but the whole team’s.  The pacer is a form of Big Ben, and is in no way responsible for our possible efficiency or waste of time.  Nor is the pacer to be a decision-maker on the time issue, allotting more or less time to different sequences.  The responsibility for managing the time segments and allotments is ultimately the whole team’s, and options concerning time management should be worked out with the moderator’s help.  It is not to be delegated to one scapegoat.
Remember, there is a decision-maker in the team for making final decisions on the time issue, just as for any other any other decision, should that need arise.

• The fourth role to be delegated is the meeting process advisor

The process advisor’s function is to do just that, at the end of the meeting.  A fifteen-minute time slot is reserved to permit this person to give improvement-focused feedback and advice to each of the team members in turn.  This should be done using coaching skills that, as we have often observed, are not necessarily known by managers, nor often practiced.  So we will give here a few basic keys.

·         Speak to people and look at them, not about them, looking elsewhere.  Coaching is about establishing connections, not about avoidance or speaking in the third person.

·         Avoid formulating generalities.  Nobody really feels concerned with general comments such as “the energy was low and it seems that we were all tired”.  General comments are also unjust, as they do not apply to all equally.  “We have a listening problem” said in to group often only applies to a minority.  A number of people are good listeners, quite aware and bothered by the problem.

·         Coaching consists in giving clear individual and improvement-focused future solution-oriented advice to each person in turn.

·         Avoid finger pointing or judgment-type comments such as “in the beginning of the meeting, you had a side discussion with your neighbor and should avoid that”.  Finger-pointing and behavioral judgments never worked for promoting change.  They just create resentment.

·         Formulate observation by speaking for yourself, such as “when you had a side discussion, I was disturbed and got sidetracked, it blew away my concentration.  I also had the feeling it had the same disturbing effect on others”. 

·         Give some thought to what you say and get involved.  On the above issue, you can also say, for instance “ what’s more I felt left out of your side discussion because it looked interesting from out here and your relationship looked pretty good, but exclusive.  I feel left out”.

·         Give options for solutions such as “I’m not saying that you should cut what you have to say to your neighbor.  Then we’d all loose out on the comment.  I’d rather you include us all in the discussion and get us involved in the same type of relationship.  In the future, I suggest you give your comment to the group, in the meeting”.

·         You can also extrapolate further by making a parallel between the meeting behavior or process (local) with what happens in the organizational (general) system.  In the above context, this would be for instance “It strikes me that your two departments are also seen as quite close, which is good in itself, but exclusive to the rest of the organization.  It would likewise be good to include the whole organization into your exclusive relationship.  Then we would all gain”.

These are all coaching skills that are not often known by managers and even less practiced.  The aim, through this role is to develop awareness on what can be efficient meeting behavior and processes, and link these to efficient organizational behaviors and processes.

• Other regular or exceptional meeting roles can be created depending on specific team needs, such as the host, the technician, and the writer.

The host is a role that has often been developed in organizations which choose to have their meetings in different locations on a rotating basis. 

In a European company, for instance, each quarterly meeting was held in a different country in turn.  Organizing the two-day stay for the rest of the group occupied the host quite well.  One of the concerns was to see that the European team had an influence on the local system through visits, other meetings and interfaces with local departments, and give a feedback to the local system before they left.  The rotational process had an influence on all the local systems in turn.

This same type of rotational process for meeting location was organized in a regional restaurant chain.  The regional managers had their regional meetings in each of the restaurants in turn, and modeled the professional attitude and behaviors they expected their employees to have.  A different host organized each meeting in a different location.

The technician is a useful role in the case of use of complex technical equipment.  So many meetings have been sidetracked because of faulty or poorly mastered complex equipment. 

The writer could be temporary support role for the moderator if the latter has difficulty in flip-chart writing.  The danger of course is in having two people up-front, competing for group attention.

Experience has shown that it is important to formally ensure that the above meeting roles rotate among all the team members without exception, on a regular, predictable or programmed basis.  If that is not done, teams in general will favor the same people doing the same roles on a regular basis, and that will have a very clearly measurable conservative effect.

Regularly having the same people “carry” the delegated roles gives them a central “power” position that in turn favors others not owning their equal share of responsibility in the meeting and team processes and results.

Circulation of the roles helps promote shared ownership, co-responsibility, empowerment, delegation, and partnership in the team.  As each of the team members become proficient in each of the roles, he or she will also gradually acquire the basic managerial skills inherent in each of the roles. 

This management training dimension is one of the most important arguments against having the “good” team members carry any one role on a regular basis.  It is important for all the team members to learn and become proficient in all the roles.

To ensure the circularity of the roles, we again propose a medium term plan and chart determining their rotation among all the team members on a predictable basis, over a period of 6 to 12 months.  The following chart is a partial example of one we have seen, names remaining to be filled in.

We have witnessed that when it is carried out correctly, the delegated meeting process has a quick and direct effect in developing meeting efficiency in most team meetings.  Countless teams have very rapidly benefited from the tool in almost any cultural or multicultural setting, worldwide.

It is important to underline however, that meeting efficiency is not the tool’s main effect nor its most important one.   Each of the delegated roles is tailored to teach and practice a specific managerial competence that we have often seen lacking in organizations.

As different team members practice and see others practice the same role time and again, they gradually and almost “naturally” learn that competence.  They learn by doing and by seeing others experiment with the same difficulties. As the roles or functions are learned by each, the skills are naturally used in their day to day management.

Practicing and observing others practice the coaching role in meetings on a regular basis teaches each of the team members how to coach.  These coaching skills are then applied in the management of each of their own teams elsewhere.
Practicing and observing others practice the decision driver role teaches each of the team members to focus on making and following-up decisions.  That skill is then used in the management of their own teams.

Practicing and observing others practice the pacer role on a regular basis teaches each of the team members how to better pace themselves in their daily tasks and ultimately, pace their own teams.  The tool gradually teaches better time management to the whole system.

Practicing and observing others practice the facilitator role teaches each of the team members some of the fundamentals of how to manage team energy and participation in collective endeavors.  That management skill is then used in the management of each of the participant’s teams.

The roles provided by the Delegated Processes are designed to provide a management development and training context that is inserted in meetings.  As participants play each role in turn in each meeting, they indirectly learn basic management tools.  In effect, team meetings gradually become a systemic management development learning environment.

Implementing the Delegated Processes tool in a large number of meetings in an organization is not only a way to ensure better meeting management but mainly a tool to develop better management in general.

To be continued...

Copyright 2008.  www.metasysteme.eu  Alain Cardon