Size of SAP [was: Straw process outline for dealing with structural and practices problems]

[Christopher Allen]

Straw process outline for dealing with structural and practices problemsFrom:
Elwyn Davies wrote:
> There will be eleven members of the SAP as follows:

I've been involved in the meeting facilation consulting industry peripherally
for over a decade, and there are some studies that say that this is not a very
efficient number of people, unless you expect 3 or 4 no-shows regularly.

The optimum size for a committee has been show by numerous studies to be more
ideally somewhere around 7. There are a variety of reasons hypothesized for
this, but I've found it to be true from experience. One hypothesis is that this
allows sufficient time for everyone to be able to have their input into the
conversation without becoming distracted or bored waiting for others to finish.

My personal experience with groups of 9-15 is that someone always feels left
out, that their opinion was not properly considered, or that the meeting is
rigged against them by either personality, charisma, or process. Just a slightly
bit fewer people and somehow this doesn't happen.

I've tried to solve this in the past by breaking up groups of 9-15 into smaller
task meetings or sub-groups, but that doesn't really work very well either.

Oddly, when you grow the group to 25 or so there are iterative group processes
that you can use that are different then what is used in a committee that work
very well. The 'dead spot' is 10-20 -- small group processes don't work
effectively and medium group processed don't work either. (Just FYI, the
iterative group processes that work for 25+ people begin to fail at 70 people or
so.)

My suggestion is that you either consider making the SAP group a tad smaller,
say 8 or 9, or increase the size to 25 or so and use an iterative group process
and a facilitator when they meet.

-- Christopher Allen

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.. Christopher Allen                            Alacrity Management ..
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