The manager who offers to chair or staff the working group on a contested question schedules its meetings, frames its questions, and drafts its report, so the group's conclusion carries that manager's structure.
An example
Unable to agree on whether to shorten branch opening hours, a regional bank's executive committee set up a task force to recommend. The head of branch operations volunteered to chair it. She proposed the questions the group would answer: what customers did in branches by hour, what it cost to stay open, and what had happened to deposits at banks that had cut hours. She scheduled six meetings, made sure the retail and marketing members were heard at each, and had her team draft the report. Marketing's objection, that shorter hours would hurt the brand among older customers, went into the report beside the data showing older customers mostly came in before two o'clock. The task force recommended closing at four on weekdays in all but twelve branches. The executive committee adopted it without changes.
Why it works
The chair of a working group decides its questions, its order of business, and the first draft of its report, and the group's conclusion takes the shape those choices give it. A proposal framed by the questions the chair chose looks better, and adopting the report is easier, because members have been heard and the report reflects the process. That holds only with honest work, members who are heard and whose dissents are recorded, and a mandate the executives will honor. A chair who steers too hard loses the members, and then the report loses its weight.
The thinking behind it
Jeffrey Pfeffer Pfeffer's Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations (1992) treats representation on important task forces and committees as a sign of a unit's power (chapter 3), and information and analysis as tools used in political contests (chapter 13). Chairing a task force combines the two, since the chair sits on the body and shapes the analysis it produces. The influence comes from that position, and a report seen as steered loses it.
Herbert A. Simon Simon's Administrative Behavior (1947) holds that choices are shaped by premises the organization supplies, such as goals, information, and procedures, so whoever controls them influences the decision. A task force chair supplies all three to the group: the questions it answers, the information it sees, and the procedure it follows. The executive committee then adopts a conclusion drawn from those premises.
When it fits
Delegated questions are where it fits: hours, policies, structures, standards that leadership has handed to a group. Expect to need time for the work, staff who can draft, and enough credibility that members accept a chair with a known view. It suits a manager whose case rests on facts that a structured inquiry will bring out.
How to use it well
Volunteer when the group is formed, and offer to do the work: scheduling, framing, drafting.
- Propose the questions in writing at the first meeting and invite changes.
- Give every member a real hearing, and take dissents into the report in their own words.
- Share drafts early and often, so nothing in the final version surprises anyone.
- Keep minutes that show what was discussed and decided.
State your own view openly at the start, then keep it out of how you run the meetings. The group's conclusion carries weight because the process was fair. That fairness is what you are drawing on, and it is gone once you abuse it.
What it costs and where it backfires
Chairing is work, and it falls on you and your team. You own the report's quality, and if the group divides, you take the blame for the split. Members who think you steered will say so to the executives. Honesty in the process is the line. Once dissents are dropped from the report, or meetings are set for times opponents cannot attend, the group is a front, and the report will be challenged.
When it is used on you
Let a colleague with a known view chair a group you sit on, then ask at the first meeting to see the questions and add your own. Ask for dissents to be recorded in members' own words and for drafts to circulate before the final. Keep your own notes of each meeting.