Many people think 'extra work' when they hear the word 'implementing' and depending on the current state of your committee this might be true in the short term. Some committees are in worse shape than others and over time developed a series of habits that are sometimes difficult to change.

Yet good practice can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best result) way to accomplish a task. This means that whatever effort you need to do to change some things at the base will surely pay off in the long run!

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“Implementing good practices in committee and meeting management will benefit you as chair, your committee members and eventually the entire organization.”

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How to get started?

There is no fixed recipe for implementing good practices nor is there just one preferred way of doing it. Best practices are a collection of techniques and methods that over time have proven with large groups of people to be most efficient and effective. These methods can usualy be implemented one by one, independently of each other. This single step approach is what makes it relatively easy to get started. Many committees are in fact doing some things already but sometimes without a good plan.

The pyramid below illustrates the benefits of implementing good practices in relation to the effort needed to do so. You will notice that in the beginning the benefits are huge with relatively little effort. The more effort you put in, the more benefits you will get out. Every organization and committee will have to find the level they want to reach.

Before your start, you will need to asses where you are and where you can make the most efficient improvements. At regular intervals you should repeat this assessment to make sure you are still on the right track and to evaluate if the improvements you are implementing are really working. It's recommend to do this at least once a year. If your committee has very frequent meetings (E,g, every week) or you want to monitor the initial steps more closely, you can even schedule this every 3 or 6 months. You can perform this assessment with our committee self-evaluation tool.

If you know that your committee is not performing very well you will most likely be in the lower part of the pyramid and can realize big improvements with very little work. If you think you are doing pretty well you can use the self-evaluation tool to double check and confirm.

• Committee self-evaluation tool

  The self-evaluation tool provides a framework and suggested questions for use in evaluating your committee.... Read more