Customer Reviews

Breaking Robert's Rules: The New Way to Run Your Meeting, Build Consensus, and Get Results

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has great value whether you are a business owner, politician or public agency staffer, an environmentalist, a facilitator, mediator or any other interested party. It provides a simple, concise and easy-to-understand review of the consensus building process. From a communication perspective, consensus building lends itself towards helping any party in a negotiation develop a greater understanding and wider range of solutions that may be available on any given issue.

The authors frame the limitations of "traditional" Robert's Rules for running public meetings. These traditional methods tend to offer binary decisions (yes or no) which often limit discussion, stifle creativity, and almost always leave someone feeling "left out".

They offer a simple, easy-to-understand and concise method to "break the chains" of communication such that more creative alternatives to issues or problems may be offered and discussed. Through a more creative and contributed process, interested parties can craft decisions based upon informed consensus which lends itself towards more lasting agreements.

The book also offers an excellent treatise on facilitation or mediation techniques. It is useful no matter "what side of the table" you may be in any given issue. A list of Key Terms at the end of each chapter offer an excellent way to reinforce understanding.

Five stars and a great contribution!

I've always been perplexed by the fact that we run our meetings according to rules dreamed up by a military engineer more than 100 years ago. Maybe Roberts' arcane procedures about what can be discussed by whom and when worked once upon a time, but they don't make sense either in the modern business world or for making important policy decisions today.

I'm not sure that the consensus building approach spelled out in this book will necessarily work in every case, but it's clear, straightforward, and practical. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has gotten sick of going to meetings only to see the will of the majority frustrated by some shrewed parliamentarian manipulating the rules. Susskind offers a constructive alternative for people who just want to get the right thing done.

The authors of this work have done groups and organizations a grave disservice with this poor 'anti-Robert's Rules' book. It would appear from it that they really don't understand parliamentary procedure (not quite the same thing as Robert's Rules).

We can thank our early European ancestors for parliamentary procedure. They developed it over several hundred years in their town assemblies, and it was later used in the English Parliament (which is were we got the term 'parliamentary procedure'). When the English settled in America, they brought along parliamentary procedure, where it was used in many assemblies, and after independence, in our Congress, state assemblies, etc.

In Gen Henry Robert's time, there were several competing parliamentary authorities. He wrote a good, simple work that codified all this, and it was accepted by many because it was just better. What difference does it make that he was a General? To somehow blame him for the formality of parliamentary procedure because of that is childish. Parliamentary procedure pre-dated him by hundred of years.

Furthermore, parlimentary procedure is usable in ALL groups of ANY size to make decisions. In large groups, rules must be more formal, and sometimes addition procedures must be followed to get things done (ex: in large conventions). In small groups, about a dozen or less, you can actually be LESS formal, and dispense with some of the normal rules you usually follow. This is set out in Robert's. I wonder if the authors are aware of this?

Consensus is nice, but should not be looked as a panacea. People should education themselves as to what parliamentary procedure REALLY is, and not listen to biased authors such as these. Or even people like myself.

This book had valuable content. However, the book's organization was sometimes hard to follow. Also, it kept repeating the same points over and over. This made the book quite boreing.