I know this is how things are frequently done, but it bothers me. When an issue is officially the jurisdiction of a committee, everyone on the committee is equally entitled to be part of the discussion, and entitled to know what’s going on; having secret side conversations creates a hierarchy between those “in the know” and those who aren’t.
I disagree quite strongly with this. Being part of a discussion is a tax. It’s overhead. It makes perfect sense, in my head, for a committee to split into subcommittees that have responsibility for specialized tasks, but which report back to and are accountable to the primary committee. In fact, I don’t see how else one would accomplish any kind of complex task that requires specialized domain knowledge. And for tasks that don’t require specialized domain knowledge, having everything presented before the committee usually results in needless bikeshedding, as everyone on the committee has to demonstrate their status and worth by proposing a change or critique, in order to show that they’ve considered the proposal and are more than a mere rubber stamp.
Even disregarding things like social signalling, group dynamics, and all the other things that geeks categorize as “social drama”, making everything that is under the jurisdiction of the committee the responsibility of the entire committee is incredibly inefficient, just from a communications perspective. It requires, in networking terms, a “fully connected mesh”, where every node has to be communicating with every other node. It’s much more efficient, even from a communication and information theory perspective, for a committee to break into smaller groups, each of which has responsibility for a specific task or specialization. These groups can then report back to the overall committee, and the overall committee can choose to adopt or reject their ideas without having to go through the expensive process of having the entire committee deliberate on every proposal for every subtask.
That all makes sense, but I think Sarah might be pointing to instances where the breaking-into groups (and subsequent pushing of the subgroup’s goals into the committee) happens for mysterious and illegible reasons.
Which I still think is often necessary/fine/just-how-humans-are, but is a bit of a different thing.
I don’t think this is different at all. It just sounds like nobody took charge in explicitly defining the sub-committees, so instead the socially savvy committee members self-organised to actually get things* done.
*these `things’ may or may not align with the purpose of the committee.
I disagree quite strongly with this. Being part of a discussion is a tax. It’s overhead. It makes perfect sense, in my head, for a committee to split into subcommittees that have responsibility for specialized tasks, but which report back to and are accountable to the primary committee. In fact, I don’t see how else one would accomplish any kind of complex task that requires specialized domain knowledge. And for tasks that don’t require specialized domain knowledge, having everything presented before the committee usually results in needless bikeshedding, as everyone on the committee has to demonstrate their status and worth by proposing a change or critique, in order to show that they’ve considered the proposal and are more than a mere rubber stamp.
Even disregarding things like social signalling, group dynamics, and all the other things that geeks categorize as “social drama”, making everything that is under the jurisdiction of the committee the responsibility of the entire committee is incredibly inefficient, just from a communications perspective. It requires, in networking terms, a “fully connected mesh”, where every node has to be communicating with every other node. It’s much more efficient, even from a communication and information theory perspective, for a committee to break into smaller groups, each of which has responsibility for a specific task or specialization. These groups can then report back to the overall committee, and the overall committee can choose to adopt or reject their ideas without having to go through the expensive process of having the entire committee deliberate on every proposal for every subtask.
That all makes sense, but I think Sarah might be pointing to instances where the breaking-into groups (and subsequent pushing of the subgroup’s goals into the committee) happens for mysterious and illegible reasons.
Which I still think is often necessary/fine/just-how-humans-are, but is a bit of a different thing.
I don’t think this is different at all. It just sounds like nobody took charge in explicitly defining the sub-committees, so instead the socially savvy committee members self-organised to actually get things* done.
*these `things’ may or may not align with the purpose of the committee.