Meetings

I have noticed something that I find interesting about meetings. There are two sorts of productive and work related activities that occur during most work based meetings, making decisions and hearing reports. The observation is really very simple and it is a connection between the Foundation Stone Meditation (FSM) and these two aspects of meetings.

Tom Ravetz has written about the FSM and brought to my attention that it bounces back and forth between the human and the cosmic, the micro and the macro. This continues for the first six verses and then in the 7th the human being is brought in to focus in a new way, through the naming of roles: shepherd and king, two polar positions in society that encompass everything in between.

Then in the 8th verse it is back out to the cosmos with an appeal to Christ to warm our hearts and enlighten out heads so that good may become. This is a development from the 7th verse with the human beings being brought in to motion, to carry out action such that good will be brought in to the world.

However, it is the last 3 lines that really show the way:

What with our hearts we would found

What with our heads we would direct

With single purpose

When human beings work together they have the opportunity to let good become together and it is in social sphere in which we engage and work together. The social sphere is the creation of the human beings, we create it ourselves, and it the mesosphere or middle sphere, between the micro and macro. This is the location of our activity and to a very great extent it is through meetings that our activity comes about.

It was thinking about this that I realised I could understand these last three lines as a simple guide to how to run meetings:

Well made decisions will feel right for everyone

Attentive listening and penetrating questions will deliver healthy accountability

And use the organisation purpose to judge decisions and performance

Which makes a lot of sense and corresponds to my experience.