The difficulty of establishing priorities in groups
Thrown back on their own resources, groups find it hard to express their priorities. Voting by a show of hands is easy but it doesn’t really work as priorities are typically about more or less, rarely about yes/no, black or white. That is why in most meetings, it falls to the (formal or informal) chairperson to sum up a discussion. Such a summary of what is critical about a situation or what a group plans to do is necessarily subjective. All the more so as in conventional meetings not all that is thought gets said and not all that is said gets heard. How can anyone be expected to guess correctly whether that silence was agreement? Or that objection was primarily against who said it as opposed to what was said? All very complex and confusing but, for that matter, no less important: What if the summary is wrong? If dissent is overlooked or glossed over and true alignment not achieved? There is no lack of meetings which end in apparent agreement and the exactly zero follows.
It gets worse if the group is made up of two or more subgroups as is so often the case in projects. Does the agreement between the leaders of these groups mean anything? If so, how much exactly? Are their teams aligned? Do they share those positions? After all, it is them who have to get the work done, together.
Then again, there’s interpretation: We agree that this and that is important. But how important exactly? More important than that third thing? And one could go on. What if the other party just shies away from conflict? From spelling out disagreement? What if their culture is one of agreeing with your priorities as a matter of politeness as in “If you think it’s important, who am I to say it is not.”
Any such fudge will be called. Reality sets in sooner rather than later. Because priorities rule. Next Monday morning certain things will get done - others not or just so so.
Which is why, when it matters, or things are not working out too well, facilitators may be called in and more elaborate means of establishing priorities used. Sadly, apart from being cumbersome and taking time we rarely have, few get us much further in establishing priorities, consensus and dissent.