it's not magic, it entails preparation, but if you are holding meetings and you don't have the principal attendees at the meetings in agreement before the group gathers, you're going to have highly unproductive meetings and you'll encourage civil wars to break out.

Meetings work best when they present a solution to a problem, and get "buy in" from the attendees who each present to the group what they will be doing to advance toward the agreed upon goals.

The executive or manager who is calling the meeting achieves this by visiting each participant in the upcoming meeting in advance and asking, "here's what we are going to talk about at the meeting, what are you going to say on this topic?" and revisiting with "here is what so-and-so is going to say, how does that affect your team, what do you need to do to prepare?" etc.

People find it much easier to agree to group goals one-on-one and very much appreciate being given time in advance to prepare their plans and statements of purpose and not be caught off-guard. Other participants in meetings benefit from hearing the harmony of purpose at the meeting and they in turn step forward to announce how they will help.

Think of it like a football huddle where plans are announced and agreed to; people aren't going into the huddle looking to argue, they're looking for agreement.

And yes, I realize that many of you have not experienced meetings organized this way, and that's why I wrote it up, it was incredibly refreshing when I first got to experience a company run this way.

> Sometimes an executive needs to integrate different perspectives and choose a direction that neither party could see.

Exactly why "disagree and commit" is so important. The decision maker is expected to have the integrated perspective that you may not have.

edit: Added clarification

In retrospect, though, is this effective?

The idea of a single person owning any decision cuts a lot of crap, blame-shifting, and responsibility-dodging. The idea that you are expected to gather input from those that have it, and synthesize that into the best decision you can, makes information flow up the organization where it does some good.

The “disagree and commit” works both ways. I once had an issue that I felt very strongly about and made a “disagree and commit” phone call to a VP 3 levels above me on an issue I had been intimately involved in. I stated a coherent case. He heard me out with respect. I executed a plan I disagreed with. Life went on.

Also, in cases where I was the decision-maker, when things went bad, I knew who to go to when creating Plan B. When you own the decision, you own the recovery plan.

—- Edit to add: W.r.t. egos, the cultural norms play a role there, too. At the time I was there, people outside Intel viewed Intel people as arrogant — but inside the company that exact same behavior was not viewed that way at all. Being very direct and expecting clear thinking was just the way we interacted. It was kind of an inside joke that once you had absorbed Intel meeting culture, going to, say, a PTA or church board meeting would drive you nuts and you had to be careful not to seem abrasive when all you were trying to do is surface issues in a clear and cogent way.

Outside the US, I think we (rightly or wrongly) view American working culture as blunt and direct. From what you've said here, Intel seems like a very good case study to learn from.

Yes. If the two people agreed, there would be no decision to make; everyone would just do what they already agree is the right thing to do.

When the two people disagree, the purpose of the meeting is for them to come to agreement on what to do before the meeting, and then explain to the executive at the meeting why the thing they agreed to do is the right thing to do. That means they have to figure out something they can agree on.

> Is the idea that they are forced to either compromise or cancel all of their plans?

The idea is that each of them wants to do something, but the two things are different, and neither of them can do anything until they've agreed on a decision and gotten the executive to ratify it. If neither of them wanted to do anything not already agreed to, then, again, there would be no decision to make.

> It seems like a common outcome might be for them to pretend to agree and then go back to their own section and just do what they want.

And then they get fired because the executive is their boss and knows what they said they would do, and it's their job to do it.

> I feel like there needs to be some kind of verification to ensure that different perspectives are actually being integrated rather than people just talking past each other.

That's what the meeting is for. If they can't convince the executive that they've done this, they have to go back and try again.

> Sometimes an executive needs to integrate different perspectives and choose a direction that neither party could see.

I don't see why this couldn't be suggested at the meeting--and of course this would result in a "go back and try again" outcome, but this time with extra input from the executive on what they might want to try.