Robert's Rules of Order
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
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)
I like the link at https://www.iww.org/resources/rustys-rules.pdf
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.
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.
https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/1985-dall...
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
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.)
Another interesting wikipedia page is 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-han...
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.
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* 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.
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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.
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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.
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...
Minorities building up their own safe zones and bubbles is... okay-ish? There's benefits, but there's downsides. Its really not the same.
Its better than nothing, but its not the same as actually coming together and discussing things in a neutral space where everyone's forced to sit and listen to each other.
Roberts Rules is that everyone (and anyone) is allowed to have 2-moments per issue to speak their mind. Once as an opening statement, and a 2nd time to retort what someone else said. (Exception: 60%+ vote to kill the debate before everyone has had a time to talk). The chairman is supposed to favor alternating discussion points as well (ie: try to find someone who is "for" an issue, then follow it up with someone who is "against" the issue), though obviously a biased chair can seed the debate in one direction. (No one is immune from a biased leader, but assuming a decent leader / chair for the meeting, good things happen).
Note that Roberts Rules is "immune" to filibuster because of the 10-minute time limit per person (though the timeout limit needs to be tweaked depending on your group's dynamics).
The US Senate has no time limits, therefore allowing a filibuster (an endless debate where you speak forever, never allowing the vote to come across). But US House retains the time limit (and has a complicated set of rules where different members ask / reserve their timeslots based on the amount of time the two parties have been allocated).
> feels free to ignore most of the conversation
You can ignore the minority voice at your own peril. When there are many other people at the meeting, ignoring other people's debate points is surely the way to lose the debate.
Ignoring the minority and letting them have the floor perpetually to discuss their points turns the minority into the majority as they convince others that their viewpoints are superior.
Especially in a meeting of mostly neutral / apolitical and reasonable people who are listening to others before they vote.
> 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-l...
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_s...
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.
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.
Every organization/group is different, if they need rules for their meetings they need to be tailored for that group.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.