Monday

I have a telephonic conference on Monday for a historical organization. The subject is very complicated and it would have been better to meet face-to-face but that was not possible. Since I'm chairing the committee, my job will be to give everyone a chance to surface their concerns on what will be areas of disagreement. That is key because none of us have all the answers on this issue - the implementation of a new law - and we need to take some recommendations to the full board.

My guess is we'll be taking more than one opinion on a few items but that's fine. All can be thrashed out at the board-level but we want to give the board the advantage of prior analysis. I've prepared a written outline of the topics and have tried to be fair in describing any conflicting positions. The participants can use it as a guide as the meeting progresses. It contains a lot of helpful information.

My initial hope is to get the minor areas (and yes, I'm aware of the danger of calling anything "minor") resolved as soon as possible so we can turn to the biggies. Early agreement creates a nice atmosphere and if we get stalled on the lofty crags we will have at least made it over the small hills. It is also an indirect reminder that we're all on the same team and that disagreement is not a problem.

I worry more about rapid agreement on the big subjects. If that happens, we'll have to pause a bit to consider what we may be overlooking. We can also have a "pre-mortem" and explore what would be the most likely source of the failure if our brilliance becomes less than stellar.

It will be interesting.