How do people stay on topic when you're with a group of people?  Large 
group, small group, it doesn't matter.  Are there any techniques that 
seem to work better than others?

The reason I'm asking is because recently I was at a Student Council 
meeting at school.  It wasn't even the whole council, just 3 members of 
the board.  We just could not stay on topic.  For example, we try to 
talk about putting up posters for an event, and we ended up talking 
about a former student who's at UM now.  We sidetracked on just about 
every subject, but still managed to get some work done.

11 responses total.

(agora93 <--> hangout9)

Welcome to life.  Drift happens, and when you notice, you drift back.

What really bothers me about the military vaccine program that the Gulf
War vets were exposed to is that the Government doesn't seem to be able
to assure the Vets that it (the vaccine) doesn't contain squalene. 
Apparently squalene has been used in vaccines as it seems to amplify the
vaccine effect, but there is animal test evidence that it itself causes
an auto-immune reaction - the host's own immune systems attacks the
host.

The trick is to think of conversations as a stack of items.  Everytime 
you drift to a new topic, you push a new item on the stack.  If you 
constantly push new items onto the stack, you usually end up with very 
interesting but non-productive conversations.  If you're trying to stay 
on topic, you have to remember to pop the stack once in a while.  

Of course, if you're talking to a bunch of non-computer people, you'll 
probably get strange looks when you say, "So, popping off the 
conversation stack..." to segue back to a previous topic.  Fortunately, 
all my friends are geeks. :)

A good thing to do is to get in the habit of starting your comments with a
description of what you're talking about.  "Well, as far as ____ goes, I
think...." or "Speaking of _____" or whatever.  That way, if you are "popping
off the conversation stack," as Chris puts it, it'[ll be clear that that's
what you're doing.

Use Roberts Rules of Order. These provide the structure that was lacking
in that meeting. They require, however, that there be a firm chairperson
and members familiar with the procedure. In this case, it just requires
that one person will "chair" the discussion, and the others will agree
to accept that leadership. Then, the chair just keeps the discussion
on topic (that is, diverts non-germane subjects that arise). 

I ignored that there was a meeting in progress, thinking of general
conversations.  For meetings, having a plan beforehand helps.  One
model is "Purpose, Agenda, Limits":  A sentence describing the purpose
of the meeting, a list of topics to be covered, with a time limit for
each one.

Keep it simple:  If you have a pressing issue, then one determined person can
easily keep the conversation on track, if they're willing to be assertive.

It is simply discipline.  Robert's rules, for example, are just a formalized
way of imposing the discipline (more practical for large groups),  but you
still need an assertive leader.

The rest of the relevant responses jut address (fairly obvious) mechanisms.

An essential requirement is that everyone agrees to be bound by the
agenda and whatever rules (e.g., time limits) you deem adviseable. It
doesn't work very well if anyone resents a chair being assertive. 
Everyone has to subscribe to the chair being assertive (but whose
rulings can be appealed - this is the nice thing about RRoO - they
cover so many contingencies of allowing the majority to rule but to
give the minority maximum rights to assert their positions). 

As others have pointed out, there does need to be a person in charge of the
meeting, and that person has to steer the discussion back to the topic at hand.
If that person loses control, and no one else steps forward, you're lost.

As demonstrated by #0!

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss