Consolidating governance meetings.

How to get several hundred volunteers to work smarter, better, and faster.

Successfully changing long-established patterns of volunteer interactions to streamline policy development is an unusual accomplishment--especially in a membership association that has 118,000 members and associates.

Yet that is what the American Psychological Association (APA), Washington, D.C., has achieved by instituting a "consolidated meetings" approach that any of the association's boards or committees can elect to participate in. This format switch allows members and staff to work more efficiently on policy-development issues. It also offers a mechanism by which conflicts can be resolved immediately--no longer is setting up a new task force to iron out problems the sole recourse.

APA has 33 mandated boards and committees, each of which meet at least twice a year in the fall and spring. More than 400 members participate in the association's governance structure, including those who are elected to the council of representatives by APA's 48 divisions and 58 state and provincial psychological associations.

In addition, APA supports 29 (at last count) special task forces, panels, and working groups that have specific tasks and theoretically go out of business when their tasks are completed. Most task forces report to committees, which report to their oversight boards, which report to the council of representatives through the board of directors. The sheer number of these groups makes for a complex, byzantine process of policy development, providing irresistible opportunities for misunderstandings and turf battles to develop.

Tracking a typical issue from its origination to its disposition used to be quite a challenge. Consider this example: An issue might originate from any of the 120 or so members of the council of representatives at its February meeting and be referred to a relevant committee, which meets in the spring.

In considering the issue, the committee might seek input from another committee that doesn't meet until fall, so the original committee would not receive comments until the following spring. Already, more than a year would have elapsed.

The issue would then be sent to the committee's oversight board, which could decide it didn't like the committee's recommendation. It would then go back to the committee at the fall meeting, then to the oversight board again, and then to the board of directors at its December meeting, and back to the council of representatives in February--two full years later.

A single issue might be referred to more than one group for consideration, compounding the process. If the issue was complicated or controversial or required legal review from the committee on legal issues, the referral within the board and committee system could easily take three or more years. The record time in APA's policy-development system was nearly eight years for one issue.

Status quo was working under this system, but just barely. The longer an issue remained on the agendas of the boards and committees, the greater the chance for misunderstanding. APA values diversity of opinion and works for consensus, but Washington, D.C., traffic moved faster at rush hour than the association's policy-development process did.

Speed was not the only issue in seeking a way to improve the policy-development process. Resolving differences had become more painful than necessary. Once tensions between groups had been established, they tended to escalate rather than diminish.

Under APA's old governance system, at least one group held a meeting every weekend during fall and spring; often several met at the APA building and at different sites throughout the city. Some of the association's staff liaisons worked four or five successive weekends each fall and spring, and the chief executive officer and his deputy often spent every weekend in meetings.

Preparing for meetings, attending meetings, and follow-up required a huge amount of staff time, which meant staff did not have sufficient time to carry out the projects and activities generated at the meetings. Clearly, there had to be a better way.

APA Chief Executive Officer Raymond D. Fowler's answer to the dilemma was consolidated meetings--boards and committees meeting concurrently at the same site over three days. He envisioned more opportunities for communication among groups and more efficient use of volunteer and staff time with this approach. He assigned his deputy chief executive officer, L. Michael Honaker, the task of developing the consolidated meeting concept.

Fowler's vision of harmony, however, sounded more like a nightmare to liaison staff and some governance members than a dream come true. Bringing all these diverse and sometimes fractious groups together would require enormous logistical changes in meeting arrangements, not to mention a huge shift in the way boards and committees did business.

Yet changes were needed to

* create a mechanism for clear, real-time communication among groups;

* foster a sense of community among psychologists to encourage awareness of each other's issues and viewpoints;

* identify potentially divisive issues early in the process so that the right people with the right expertise could be involved;

* make wiser use of volunteer and staff time; and

* find ways of showing members how much their contributions were needed and appreciated.

Sharing concerns

Three major groups needed to be convinced that consolidated meetings would work or at least that the concept was worth trying: staff, members of the 33 boards and committees, and the board of directors. First, the nearly 50-member liaison staff had to become comfortable--or at least less uncomfortable--with the idea.

In meetings with all the staff liaisons, Honaker invited everyone to "tell us why this won't work." For example, the science directorate wanted to ensure that fall meetings did not conflict with other important scientific conferences held throughout the fall.

The public-interest directorate had another concern. Five committees of public interest working on aspects of the theme "violence and youth" as it relates to ethnic minorities, women, children, youth and families, lesbians and gay men, and people with disabilities, wanted to make sure they could get meeting rooms located as close to one another as possible to facilitate joint discussions.

Allowing everyone to state concerns and problems made it possible to discuss how to solve potential roadblocks. This occurred primarily in small staff meetings within APA's major departments so that individual idiosyncratic differences could be identified and taken into account early on.

The coordinating group on governance issues, composed of senior staff liaisons from each of the major areas of the association, played a critical role in developing concepts and relaying information to liaison staff.

Once the process of involving staff was under way, it was time to involve members of each of the 33 major boards and committees. Every group was visited at least once during a two-year period by either Honaker or myself. Our theme was still "Tell us why this won't work." And many did.

But others were enthusiastic, and overall a "wait-and-see" attitude developed. At each meeting cycle, agenda items for information and discussion provided the latest innovations and refinements as plans developed for the consolidated meetings.

The board of directors supported the concept of consolidating meetings and understood intellectually that this format could facilitate consensus and resolution of important policy issues, but it, too, had a wait-and-see attitude. The board eventually agreed to a one-year trial period.

Other than the general idea of the concurrent meeting format, all other processes were open for creative problem-solving. APA staff determined that three consolidated meetings a year would work best: one meeting for the association's committees early in the fall, one meeting for the boards later in the fall, and one spring meeting in which all groups would meet concurrently.

The fall meetings would focus on issues that cut across several constituencies and the spring meetings would focus on issues important to the group's own constituency. However, once the boards and committees were together, how were we going to get them to talk to one another?

Many of APA's members work in such diverse settings that interaction among them would be difficult. For instance, clinical psychologists have very little in common with testing and assessment psychologists. It soon became clear that the hard work was just beginning and that new mechanisms would be necessary to foster the desired interaction.

Enhancing communication

Three tools would prove particularly useful to the association in improving communication and interaction among its constituent groups: an agenda planning group, a cross-cutting issues agenda, and conference committees.

A potentially powerful influence on the success or failure of the new system were the chairs of major boards and committees. These leaders, like their fellow members, had very little idea what other groups did or were supposed to do.

APA established an agenda planning group, composed of the chairs of the major boards and committees and APA's president, that would meet four to six weeks before the fall and spring board and committee meetings. Its mission was:

1. to identify cross-cutting issues, defined as those issues relevant to more than one constituency, and

2. to refer new business items introduced by the council of representatives to appropriate boards or committees.

The first meeting of the agenda planning group provided surprises. Agreeing on items that were cross-cutting proved simple because the senior staff liaisons had done the tough job of reviewing every agenda of every group to develop their recommendations. Referring new items of business brought out some turf issues, which engendered direct exchanges among the chairs about which groups had a salient personal interest and why. Recommendations contained in a report from the task force on psychopharmacology, for example, were of interest not only to the practice community but also to the science and education directorates who had boards and committees with a stake in whether and how the recommendations would be implemented.

Communication among people who rarely communicated with one another began. Compromises reached early in the process of decision making short-circuited months of misunderstandings, conference calls, and negotiations.

APA also introduced another new feature to the process--a cross-cutting agenda book for each consolidated meeting, containing all the items ready for discussion that cut across constituencies. These books contained items about proposed policy issues, which might include development of standards or guidelines, and administrative issues, such as calls for nominations. The first agenda book contained 15 items in 216 pages. The latest agenda book has 26 items in 328 pages. One staff member is ultimately responsible for the identification, compilation, and distribution of the agenda, while the staff for APA's boards and committees actually write agenda items.

Some items did not require action but contained information that needed to be widely disseminated, such as ethics code revisions. Groups were not required to formally comment on any of the items in the cross-cutting agenda book, but members rarely pass up opportunities to express or influence opinions.

The cross-cutting agenda book also allowed everyone to see what issues were in the system. Members were better informed and had a more coherent understanding of issues, which reduced suspicion and political intrigue. The agenda book also made it easier to trace the status of an issue in the system. When the items reached the council of representatives for final disposition, all parties were satisfied that each constituency had been given an opportunity for input.

Although most cross-cutting items were relatively benign, a few provoked predictable conflicts in viewpoint. A psychologist elected to represent and protect minority concerns will view an item on the use of psychological testing quite differently, for example, from an industrial/organizational psychologist. The public-interest psychologist will be very interested in whether the test is sensitive to cultural, ethnic, and language differences among the test subjects, while the industrial/organizational psychologist will want to know if the test meets his or her company's needs.

To facilitate consensus on cross-cutting issues, we relied on conference committees. During the consolidated meetings, any board or committee could request a conference committee on any issue in the cross-cutting agenda book. No group could be excluded from participating if it wished to participate, although only one official representative from each group could vote on issues. Conference committees were scheduled for 5-6:30 each evening so that they did not conflict with regular meeting time. Detailed procedures, developed to ensure fairness, were included in the packets for each attendee and discussed with the chairs before each meeting.

Conference committees proved to be enormously successful in helping participants consistently reach consensus. In the rare instances that resolution wasn't possible, participants identified changes that needed to be made before the issue could be resolved.

By the time the council of representatives considered these issues for final disposition, compromises had been worked out, saving enormous amounts of time that would otherwise have been spent on debate. Several conference committees achieved in one day what would have formerly taken years to accomplish.

For example, a main motion urging psychologists not to use their professional knowledge and techniques to sell tobacco products proved to be quite controversial. The public-interest board favored the resolution, while the board of professional affairs, board of scientific affairs, and the policy and planning board opposed the item.

Under the old system, this item would have bounced among groups for at least two years until it was finally resolved or voted down--requiring enormous amounts of staff and member time. The conference committee recommended a change in tone and focus of the resolution to urge psychologists to take cognizance of the public welfare and to consider voluntarily suspending all efforts at using psychological techniques to market tobacco products as a matter of conscience. The resolution was passed at the next council of representatives meetings and became association policy.

Responding to evaluations

Skeptics had predicted the new system would produce confusion and havoc, and not much else. Throughout the initial round of consolidated meetings, we encouraged participants and staff to fill out a detailed evaluation form that included rating scales to give us hard data and room for comments.

From a group of people who are historically strict graders, the overall rating for the meetings averaged above four points on a five-point scale. Most importantly, we responded to the evaluations. Between the first fall meeting and the second one, we modified some events and schedules based on evaluations from the first meeting. Psychologists call that positive reinforcement.

For example, participants did not want a plenary session to be held on the morning of the first day of meetings, so it was scheduled for the second morning in subsequent meetings. We also responded to participants' requests that open forums not be scheduled in the evenings because of time and fatigue factors.

New meeting requirements

Switching from individual board or committee meetings to the consolidated format did significantly change meeting arrangements. In the past, members were notified of meeting dates, and they made their own travel arrangements. Staff reserved hotel rooms and arranged for a meeting room at APA headquarters and any meals or refreshment breaks.

With the advent of consolidated meetings, it seemed as if we were arranging a mini annual convention because of the need for extensive planning in such areas as advance hotel negotiations, formal registration procedures, and event scheduling (allowing sufficient time for groups to meet individually, while leaving ample time for joint activities and social events).

Working together

In the past, the impulse at APA was to set up a task force or working group to resolve an issue. The consolidated meeting format instead encourages the relevant parties to meet and discuss their concerns. Consolidated meetings offer an enormous potential for reducing the differences in cultures throughout the association so that the energy and talent of members can be used to further psychology in all its facets, instead of for lighting for a chance to be heard.

Can this system work for any association? Perhaps, but the lessons learned from the process certainly have widespread application.

In effecting change, APA came face-to-face with three immutable rules:

1. Listen. 2. Listen. 3. Listen.

The process of switching to a consolidated meeting format could have been undermined by any number of things--staff could have killed it, the board of directors could have feared alienating association leaders, the participants could have vigorously resisted the change. APA believes consolidated meetings were allowed to work because organizers asked for feedback at every opportunity and responded to it.

Boards and committees that did not participate in the first consolidated meetings are now looking for ways to change their schedules to participate in succeeding years. The board of directors unanimously voted to continue the system permanently and dates have been set through 1995.

All we have to do now is find sites with enough meeting rooms. Not a bad problem to have.

* THE KEY TO MAKING the switch to consolidated meetings is to solicit--and listen to--feedback from members at every opportunity.

* IDENTIFYING CROSS-CUTTING ISSUES and creating a forum for their discussion can enhance communication and allow for compromise among membership groups with special interests.

Reaching Consensus

APA developed the following guidelines to ensure fairness in conference committee deliberations:

* A group or groups requesting a conference committee must fill out a form. Staff will assign a meeting room and inform all other groups of the conference committee meeting.

* The chair or designee of the originating group will chair the meeting.

* Each group wishing to participate can send one representative who will have full voice and vote. Other groups may not have a position or particular expertise on the issue but may wish to send an observer to monitor. Observers will not have a vote, but they can participate in discussion. Members of the board of directors may be observers.

* Once the conference committee is organized, the chair presents the item to be discussed with the appropriate background and describes the main motion. Members then identify themselves as representing a group or participating as observers.

* Next, the chair identifies consensus points, after which the committee discusses each area of disagreement and determines if resolution is possible. Finally, the chair summarizes the outcome of the conference committee meeting (consensus, agreement on some points, possible compromise language for approval, or no agreement).

* Staff distributes revisions to all groups the following morning for consideration. If a follow-up conference committee is necessary, the process for requesting it remains the same.

Nancy Forest is director of board and committee operations for the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C.