Set thine house in order.—Isaiah 38.1
In general, order is preferable to disorder. The Bible associates the act of creation with the introduction of order into chaos, and organization is one of the signs of a well-managed department or household. Yet there are circumstances in which order can be taken to an extreme. In some cases, too much order prevents people from interacting effectively with each other. In addition, there are circumstances in which order is clearly inappropriate. For example, the ingredients in many recipes can only fulfill their purpose if they are well mixed together.
Many academic organizations, from individual departments to whole colleges and universities, to larger professional associations, conduct their meetings according to Robert’s Rules of Order. First formulated in 1876 by Henry Martyn Robert (1837–1923), who once briefly served as Chief of the US Army Engineers, Robert’s Rules is probably the most widely used guide to parliamentary procedure in the United States. Some organizations are so reliant on it that they recruit members and in some cases retain consultants to act as parliamentarians.
There is no question that Robert’s Rules can serve as an effective means of bringing order to many different types of meetings, including not only academic organizations but also businesses, civic groups, and religious organizations. In fact, it is often in service to such community organizations that academicians develop familiarity with parliamentary procedure in the first place. Robert’s Rules is useful, especially for large organizations, in providing consistent and in many respects fair patterns for organizing the flow of a meeting.
But those who rely on Robert’s Rules should understand not only the text of the Rules but also its limitations. There are circumstances in which abiding by Robert’s Rules may undermine or even prevent a meeting from accomplishing its goals. The savvy leader recognizes that Robert’s Rules is not the Bible for conducting business. Instead, it is a set of suggestions for enhancing some aspects of a meeting. Robert’s Rules is not the only template for running a meeting, and there are circumstances in which relying on it would be a mistake.
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