Chapter 5

Ordering Business: The Agenda

In This Chapter

Following the standard order of business

Understanding why matters are taken up in a particular order

Using an agenda to plan your meeting and keep tasks on track

The meetings you attend are probably a lot like business trips. You want to finish the business and get back home or back to work or play. You probably don’t even consider going on a business trip without some sort of itinerary — not unless you have all the time in the world and you don’t care about the people you have to meet or the deals you have to make. My guess is that you don’t have that kind of time and that you do care about others and about successfully handling your business.

In this chapter, I walk you through order of business — that is, the sequence you establish by rule to handle all the different issues that need to come before your members in the meetings. Then I show you how to develop an agenda, or itinerary, for your meeting and how to use it to work through your order of business. If you want to know how to get in and out of your meeting quickly and still get done everything you need to do, you’re reading the right chapter.

Order of Business Sequence

At the foundation of every good meeting is a good meeting plan. And Robert is the man with the plan. His rule book provides your group with this standard order of business, which is simply a sequence for taking up each different class of business in the following order:

1. Reading and approval of minutes: Important actions happened in your previous meeting. Before you do anything else, make sure that everyone agrees with the record of that meeting.

2. Reports of officers, boards, and standing committees: Your leadership team likely is working in between membership meetings, and you need to hear what it’s been up to before you venture into too many decisions.

3. Reports of special committees: If your group has appointed any special committees for specific purposes, you need their info, too. But these committees wait their turns and report after the standing committees make their reports.

4. Special orders: Sometimes you need to schedule particular items of business before you take up matters you’ve postponed from a previous meeting. And sometimes the bylaws require that you do something at a particular meeting; for example, maybe your bylaws include a “nominations in November” rule. Such items of business and bylaw requirements qualify as special orders.

5. Unfinished business and general orders: Before you do anything else, you need to finish what you’ve already started. Now is the time to get back to the postponed motions and any business that was pending when your previous meeting adjourned.

6. New business: If time permits, you can broach the subject of new business. You’ve taken a wise step by waiting until you’ve taken a shot at all the other stuff. It’s sort of like cleaning your plate before you get dessert.

If you’ve adopted Robert’s Rules, much of your meeting planning is done for you. This order of business framework is really all you need to develop your meeting agenda.

The term order of business refers not only to the complete sequence of the classes of business within the order of business, but also to any individual class of business. In other words, when referring to a single class of business within the order of business, the single class can also be referred to as an order of business.

Approving the minutes

In the years before word processors and copy machines, the secretary wrote the minutes of meetings in a book kept for that purpose. When the next meeting rolled around, the secretary read the minutes, the chairman asked for any corrections, and the secretary made notations in the margins of the minutes being corrected.

Today technology has made its mark on meeting minutes. The secretary can now draft the minutes and easily send copies to the members for them to read before the meeting; then members can come to the meeting prepared with any corrections. You can still read the minutes aloud to the members in the meeting, if you want to, but if time is precious, distribute the draft of the minutes in advance.

You need to be mindful that minutes drafted ahead of time aren’t the official minutes until the members approve them. Because changes may be made in the minutes before they’re approved, it’s good practice for the secretary to note somewhere on the distribution copy that it’s a “draft for approval” at the next regular meeting. Flip to Chapter 17 for the complete breakdown of how to write good minutes.

Members who make notes of any corrections to meeting minutes are able to keep accurate records if they keep their copies of the draft minutes on file or if a final version isn’t automatically distributed to them at a later date.

Handling the motion for approval

The most efficient way of approving minutes is for the chair to assume the motion and obtain unanimous consent (see Chapter 8) that the minutes be approved as distributed (or as corrected).

The presiding officer says, “The minutes have been [read/distributed] to you. Are there any corrections?” If corrections are offered, the chair handles each by offering the correction to the membership, just to be sure everyone agrees that the correction is accurate. The secretary then enters the corrections on the master copy. When no (further) corrections are offered, the presiding officer says, “If there are no (further) corrections . . . (pause) . . . the minutes are approved as read/distributed/corrected.”

It’s never in order for a member to simply object to the approval of minutes. If a member has some objection to the content of the minutes, he must offer a correction. If disagreement arises about the correction, the correction can be amended using the rules for amendments. Check out Chapter 9 for details on procedures for handling amendments.

Approving minutes by committee

If the assembly isn’t meeting again for a long time (if at all), such as in annual membership meetings or conventions of delegates, the process of approving the minutes is delegated to a special committee or an executive board. This practice produces an approved and legal record of the meeting shortly after the meeting closes but before memories of what occurred in the meeting fade.

If yours is a group that customarily deals with minutes by a motion to “dispense with the reading of the minutes,” you need to make a change. Your intent is probably to approve them with that motion, but you don’t actually approve anything. You just agree not to read them. If you want to use the term dispense in your meeting, let it be to “dispense with the reading of the minutes and approve them as distributed/printed.”

Hearing the reports of officers, boards, and standing committees

After you’ve approved your minutes, your leadership team gets to bend your ears telling you what they think you need to know and what they think you need to do about it. Except for the big-deal annual meetings, when everybody likes to get into the act of telling you about all the hard work they’ve done during the year, this order of business is usually short, sweet, and to the point. For details on how to compose good reports, take a look in Chapter 17.

For the most part, the officers (except for the treasurer) don’t usually have a report at regular membership meetings. Nor does the board, unless it’s handling something that needs the membership’s attention. Standing committee reports are the reports heard most frequently in this portion of the order of business. But despite their infrequency, reports from the leadership team tend to include items of high importance, so Robert’s Rules places them second from the top in the standard order of business.

The prepared presiding officer knows in advance which officers and committees have reports, and she doesn’t waste any time calling for reports unless she knows someone has a report to give.

Under this order of business, reports (if there are any in this portion of the agenda) are taken up in this order:

1. Officers: Reports are taken up in the order the bylaws list the officers. If an officer’s report includes recommendations, another member moves for the adoption of the recommendation or otherwise makes any appropriate motions that arise from the report. (It’s not good form for the officer to move his own recommendations.)

2. Boards: After the officers’ reports, the boards make their reports. If a board has recommendations, the reporting member makes the necessary motion. The motion doesn’t require a second because the board is a body of more than one person. If the report gives rise to a motion by any member, it’s in order to entertain that motion at this time.

3. Standing committees: Reports and recommendations of standing committees are made one by one, in the order the bylaws list the standing committees. Just as with boards, the reporting member makes any motions, which require no second unless a committee is a committee of one; if the report gives rise to a motion by any member, it’s proper to entertain the motion at this time.

Two types of standing committees have completely different procedures for properly handling their reports. They are resolutions committees and nominating committees. Not only are reports from these committees never adopted, but the committees’ recommendations are never directly voted on.

If an officer or committee report doesn’t contain any recommendations, it really doesn’t require any action. In these situations, I advise my clients generally to avoid adopting reports. Even a motion to receive a report isn’t proper, because the report has already been received. Only motions dealing with report recommendations are in order.

If a report contains no recommendations, the proper handling of the report is for the chair to thank the reporting member and move on to the next item of business. However, because so many people (not you, thank goodness) still don’t have a clue about good form and procedure in meetings, I usually recommend that presiding officers spell it out and say, at the conclusion of information-only reports, “Thank you. The report requires no action and will be placed on file. The next item of business is. . . .”

Receiving reports from special committees

If your organization has learned how to save meeting time and operate efficiently by making good use of committees, your meetings will often include special committee reports. Check out Chapter 16 for details on working on committees. Also take a look at Chapter 17 for the info you need to produce great committee reports.

You consider reports from special committees in the order the committees were appointed. These reports are called for only if the committee has asked to report or is due to report based on its instructions. The rules for handling special committee reports are the same as for handling the standing committee reports.

Addressing special orders

After you’ve worked through the routine items, what’s left to handle is an assortment of items of business that can cover a wide range of topics. But each item has a priority for consideration, based on what was done in earlier meetings. The class of business for items of this type with the highest priority is called special orders. This class refers to special items of business that have been given top priority by being made an order of the day through the express wishes of your members.

An order of the day is any item of business that your group is scheduled to consider at a particular session, meeting, day, or hour. Special orders (of the day) are considered in the following order:

1. Unfinished special orders: These orders haven’t yet been completed; they’ve been held over from an earlier meeting. Consideration starts with any special order that was pending when an earlier meeting adjourned; other orders are then taken up in the order they were made a special order.

2. Items made special orders for the current meeting: Because order is important, the group finishes old items before getting started with new items, even if the new items are on tonight’s agenda.

3. Items provided for in bylaws to be done at a particular meeting: Examples include items such as election of a nominating committee, selection of delegates to a convention, and election of officers.

Turning to unfinished business and general orders

Under this class of business, the next in order are motions that were before the assembly but not disposed of (for whatever reason) in earlier meetings, but that weren’t made special orders. At this point in the order of business, items fall into two categories: unfinished business and general orders.

Unfinished business

Suppose you’re considering a motion to lease a pink limousine for the Elvis impersonator scheduled to headline your annual talent show. Before you can finish your debate, the group adopts a motion to adjourn. You have unfinished business, and it’s the first item you take up (after special orders) under this order of business in your next meeting. After you decide what to do about the limousine, you’ll take up any business that was left under unfinished business in your previous meeting’s order of business. Unfinished business includes the following items, which are considered in the order listed:

1. Any item (not a special order) that was pending when the previous meeting adjourned.

2. Business items that were on the “unfinished business” list in your previous meeting but were still not taken up before adjournment.

3. Items that were general orders (see the next section) in your previous meeting but were not reached during that meeting. (They’re considered now in the order they would have come up in the earlier meeting.)

General orders

General orders are items that were made orders of the day by being postponed to a certain time (see Chapter 9) in the previous meeting so that they come up in this meeting. For example, you’re considering a motion to install a second phone line at the neighborhood clubhouse, and somebody moves to postpone the motion until next month’s meeting. The postponed motion becomes a general order for next month.

And when you give notice of a bylaw amendment that you want to have considered at the next meeting, the proposed amendment becomes a general order for that next meeting. You can also make something a general order by adopting an agenda containing the item of business, or by adopting a motion by majority vote to consider a question that’s not currently pending, such as, “I move that next month we consider a motion to host a picnic for all the soccer teams in our league.”

Calling for new business

It’s no accident that new business is the last order of business. After all, by the time you finish dealing with all the other business you have going on, you may not want to open any more cans of worms. But unless you just want to wind down your organization and disband, you need to provide the opportunity for members to introduce new items of business to the assembly. The chair is obligated to make the opportunity available; he does this by announcing that new business is in order and asking if any member has such business to present. At this time, it’s in order for any member to make any main motion or to take from the table any item previously laid on the table.

If it’s been a long meeting, you may be getting the idea that tonight’s new business may be showing up under unfinished business and general orders at your next meeting. But if you team the order of business with an agenda and good planning strategies, and if you spend quality time working in committees (as I discuss in Chapter 16), then you’re on your way to making meetings meaningful (see Chapter 3).

Using an Agenda

It’s 7 p.m. on Tuesday night. You’re attending the regular monthly meeting of your neighborhood association. Your president, Prissy Gardner (who was elected because nobody else wanted the job), is ready to start the meeting. Prissy’s really a stickler when it comes to keeping the petunias watered at the front entrance to your neighborhood, but she thinks the board is just one big beautification committee. So she starts off the meeting by going over last month’s minutes — well, just the part about the new flowerbed she wants. When she finishes with that, she starts talking about the possibility of spending some money on a sprinkler system.

In spite of the great organizational tools and techniques available in Robert’s Rules, for some reason, meetings happen all the time in which presiding officers like Prissy fly by the seat of their pants — going over last month’s minutes, rehashing old decisions, interspersing real discussions with commentary, and suppressing anybody who tries to move things along. If you’re unlucky enough to be a member of one such organization, you already know the importance of knowing how to make a meeting run with a reasonable amount of dispatch. If not, believe me when I say that the future is now for anyone who can efficiently and effectively run meetings.

Understanding the agenda

If you’re like me, you know the only way to get the most out of your time is to spend it wisely, and you want to make every second you have count. When it comes to meetings, the way to be efficient and effective simultaneously is to prepare and make good use of an agenda. An agenda is essentially a program or listing of the events and items of business that will come before the meeting. It may be a detailed program covering several meetings in a session (see Chapter 3 for info on sessions), or it may be a short list of the items of business to be handled in a routine board meeting. The agenda may (but doesn’t have to) indicate the hour for each event, or it may just show the total time allotted to each item.

The agenda may be adopted (that is, be made binding on the meeting), or it may simply be a guide to keep the meeting on track. Adopting your agenda is sometimes a good idea because it gets everybody in agreement with the meeting plan at the beginning of the meeting.

If an agenda is to be binding, it must be formally adopted by a majority vote. This vote is usually taken at the beginning of the session. Once adopted, the agenda can be changed only by a two-thirds vote.

Using Robert’s Rules’ basic agenda

Robert gives us an order of business but doesn’t mandate any particular agenda. However, he does give us an agenda protocol that has been so widely used that it’s almost universally accepted as a fundamental meeting plan. Not everything in the agenda shown here is necessary in every situation, and your agenda may even need to be more extensive and detailed. But in its own right, this basic agenda is a great arrangement of events, consistent with the standard order of business discussed throughout this chapter; you can find it at the heart of just about every good business meeting you attend. In the following section, I list the basics and add some commentary to help you put it to use in your organization as the need arises.

Call to order

When the time comes, start the meeting on time. A single rap of the gavel at the appointed hour and the declaration, “The meeting will come to order,” is sufficient. You can’t finish on time if you don’t start on time, and everybody knows when the meeting starts. A good chairman is known for starting meetings on time and will always be respected for doing so.

Opening ceremonies

Your group may customarily open meetings with an invocation and a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe you sing a hymn or the national anthem. The protocol is “God before country” (meaning you invoke the deity before you salute the flag), so plan to make your invocation before you say the Pledge. This part of the agenda is also the place to include any special opening fraternal rituals, a greeting given by one of your officers, or anything else that may reasonably fall under the category of ceremony. You don’t have to use it, of course, and in many types of meetings, you skip this item.

Roll call

If your group is a public body, or if you have a rule that certain officers must be in attendance before the meeting can proceed, this is the time to call the roll. But if you don’t have a rule requiring it, don’t waste your time on this item.

Consent calendar

This item isn’t used often, except in specialized organizations such as public legislative bodies or a large professional society’s house of delegates. A consent calendar quickly processes a lot of noncontroversial items that you can dispose of quickly by placing them on a list (the consent calendar) of items to be adopted all at once. The list can also contain special preference items to be considered in order at the appropriate time. This consent calendar is usually placed in an order of business by a special rule of order (see Chapter 2), and its placement is generally of relatively high rank.

Standard order of business

Everything on the agenda outside the standard order of business is just ancillary to the meeting. All the business really begins with the approval of the minutes and ends when you’re finished with any new business. Refer to the section “Order of Business Sequence,” earlier in this chapter, for a detailed treatment of this agenda section, including a complete discussion of the six classes of business and the items included under each.

Good of the order

This time is set aside for members to offer comments or observations (without formal motions) about the society and its work. The good of the order is also the time to offer a resolution to bring a disciplinary charge against a member for offenses committed outside a meeting. (See Chapter 18 for more on discipline.)

Announcements

This portion of the basic agenda sets aside time for officers (and members, when appropriate) to make announcements. However, the fact that this is an agenda item doesn’t prevent the chair from making an emergency announcement at any time.

Program

If you’re offering some other general presentation of interest to your members, whether it’s a film, a guest speaker, a lecturer, or any other program, it should be presented before the meeting is adjourned. If you would rather conduct the program at some other place in the agenda, it may be scheduled to take place before the minutes are read or, by suspending the rules, may be inserted within the standard order of business.

Guest speakers are often on tight schedules, so it’s quite proper for the chair to ask for unanimous consent to place the program at any convenient place on the agenda, even if the only convenient place is within the order of business.

Adjourn

This part of the agenda marks the end of the meeting — time to go home. But don’t leave until the chair declares the meeting adjourned, or you may just miss something important. Chapter 10 contains everything you need to know about properly adjourning a meeting.