Media: Podcast Picks

June 2006 | IEEE Spectrum | NA 53 The committee meeting was supposed to start at 6 p.m. and last 2 hours. But the meeting didn’t start until 6:15, and it reached the third hour before we’d gotten past the second item on the agenda. The conversation kept wandering off track, and side conversations broke out. As one colleague said to me after a similarly frustrating marathon meeting: “Well, that’s three hours of my life that I won’t have anymore.” Sound familiar? Clearly, this is not the way to run a committee, whether at work or when volunteering for activities in school, professional societies such as the IEEE, or the community. There must be a better way—and there is. Early in my career I was fortunate to read an article entitled “How to Run a Voluntary Committee Without Being Lynched,” written by a traffic engineer named Paul Box, and since then it has framed the way I participate in and chair committees—to which I’ve added a few things I learned on my own. In properly run committees, you have the opportunity to learn management skills and make contacts that can boost your career, and get something done as well. Here are some ways of improving the effectiveness and satisfaction of working on a committee.