COMPANY CONFERENCES.: The Perils of Table-Sitting

ONCE upon a time, so the story goes, a businessman had a nightmare. He was forced to watch helplessly while production was slowly strangled because of company conferences. Everyone, from vice presidents to foremen, was so busy conferring that no one had time to do any work. When the businessman awoke, he found the nightmare was real. His company was indeed paralyzed by too many conferences. His solution: a conference to do something about conferences.

As U.S. business has grown bigger and more complex, it has become increasingly hard for executives to make decisions individually; more and more they tend to rely on conferences. Now many businessmen wonder whether management-by-conference has not been carried too far. Says a New York executive: “They keep you so busy ‘familiarizing’ you with the ‘problems of the other fellow’ that you don’t have time to solve your own.” A manager of a big Eastern manufacturing plant guesses that he spends 65% of his time in conferences. How much of it is usefully spent? Says he bitterly: “None.” Not long ago a Manhattan management consultant flew to St. Louis for an important conference, found that nobody knew who had called it or why.

Despite all the jeering and complaints, most businessmen agree that in a complex, highly diversified company, conferences are essential. Says Board Chairman Frederick C. Crawford of Thompson Products, Inc.: “Companies that have decentralized, as we have, have run into the problem of communications between divisions. Conferences have become increasingly important to us.” Says Boeing Airplane Co.’s Senior Vice President Wellwood E. Beall: conferences can be “good for morale and give an increased sense of participation in policymaking.” Furthermore, decisions made by a group in which everyone understands the “why” of the decision have a better chance of being carried out as intended.

But one big danger is that conferences will be used, not to reach decisions, but to put them off. When a man runs up against a sticky problem there is always the temptation for him to appoint a committee or call a conference to get him off the hook. Says New York Management Consultant Everett Smith: “The average individual is as happy as a clam to hide behind a committee.” A variation of the decision-postponing conference is the loaded conference. This is called after an executive has already buttonholed the conferees, thus assured himself that they are in agreement with him. Then a time-wasting formal conference is called, simply to hedge the executive against criticism should his decision later turn out to be wrong.

Other conference faults are poor preparation and direction. Often a group meets before anyone has studied the subject, and the discussion is allowed to wander. Says Trans World Airlines’ President Ralph Damon: “The temptation is to wrangle about something affecting only two or three men.”

—To avoid these pitfalls, some companies have adopted what is virtually a conference manager. Standard Oil Co. of California, for example, got worried about the problem about twelve years ago, and put Conference Organizer Lewis Purkey to work on it. Says Purkey: “It took me and my staff three weeks just to find out how many committees we had and what they were supposed to do. We found that we had about 200.” Purkey set up stringent rules governing the forming of committees and running of conferences. Now every new committee must have a written outline stating its purposes before it can be formed and must convince Purkey that the purposes are worthwhile. When a committee’s useful life is ended, it must disband. Discussions at meetings are held closely to the problem. Furthermore, only the board of directors and the executive committee have authority to make group decisions; every other conference group reports to an individual executive, and he alone makes decisions and takes the responsibility. As a result of Turkey’s pruning, Standard’s committee count is now down to 57.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. prefers more informality. It lets conferences ramble a little, on the theory that this gets minds working and ideas flowing. Says Executive Engineer James Moulton: “There are a lot of things that an executive doesn’t want to put down in writing. A man will often say things that may not be sound or serious just to stimulate someone else.” But like Standard, P.G.&E. puts the job of making decisions squarely on the shoulders of individual executives.

While there are still executives who yearn for the old days, when the boss gave orders and everyone else carried them out, there is no doubt that conferences are likely to become even more solidly established as a handy management tool—if wisely used.