Letter: The Curse of the Committee

From David Williams

The analysis of the optimum number of members of a committee (10 January, p 38) reminded me of a simple relationship that I speculated on for expressing the potential value of meetings in organisations. My initial thoughts were that the effectiveness of a meeting is inversely proportional to the number of people attending the meeting.

In weak organisations, the classical default response to every new issue that arises is to “call a meeting” often with multiple participants. This is often rationalised by some misguided view of democracy and/or consensus management.

I now wonder whether the rule should be that effectiveness is inversely proportional to the square of committee size, more accurately to reflect the rapid fall-off in productivity as numbers increase.

By either rule ultimate meeting effectiveness and innovative potential is achieved when there are no attendees. It is possible to hold a reasonably effective meeting with one attendee: from then on it is all downhill.

Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK