Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Every meeting has rules, whether they’re spelled out or not. When the rules aren’t formal and explicit, it’s very hard to understand and navigate them, and even harder to get things done, unless you’re a member of the clique that’s making the decisions. Formal rules ensure that everyone has the chance to learn them and that unappointed cliques don’t dominate meetings and, as a result, entire organizations. But the rules of a meeting aren’t neutral. The way the rules are structured has a huge impact on the flow of a meeting and, therefore, on how and even whether things are decided. The rules govern the shape of an organization. They become its organizing principles on a basic and fundamental level.
Bad rules make for a broken organization.
Enter the Stack.
If you’ve ever attended an academic conference, you already have some idea on how the Stack works. Participants can raise their hands at any time, including (and perhaps, primarily) while someone else is speaking. The hand is seen by the facilitator and then the person is added to the bottom of the “Stack,” the list of people waiting to talk. (Presumably this is modeled after the computing concept of sending something to the stack for processing). When the person presently speaking is done, the next person “on the Stack” can speak.
Hopefully, you can already see the problem inherent in this “method.” It was introduced, as far as I can tell, during the Occupy movement. It quickly became the procedural rule de rigueur for all kinds of supposedly radical meetings. Second only to the idea of open membership (in which anyone who shows up to a meeting is considered a member of the organization for the purposes of decision making), this process is perhaps the single most disorganizing element introduced in the left milieu this century.
“The purpose of taking stack is to facilitate discussion and decision making in which all participants have an equal say in the conversation.” So is the Stack described in a 2010 web post by the “Cultivate Coop” website. (The Cultivate Coop is an organ of the Reformed Church in America, and receives money from places like the Eli Lilly Foundation). This is precisely the central problem with the Stack. In an effort to equalize meetings, the Stack instead enforces a vulgar egalitarianism that destroys the capacity to work. [1]
Should Everyone Have An Equal Say?
Emphatically, we must answer this question: NO. At first blush, this will undoubtedly offend the sensibilities of many, particularly those with unexamined or unreconstructed liberalism that still needs interrogating. A brief examination of the issue should be sufficient to set these reservations aside and dispel the mistaken belief that all people should have an equal say or that every contribution is inherently valuable.
Let’s start with the most extreme example: should a federal agent or a fascist have an equal say in a socialist meeting? You might object that we would never let such a person into the meeting in the first place. Fine, but what if they disguise themselves as a well-meaning socialist who’s just “asking questions?” Don’t we need a way to stop this kind of interference?
In a more anodyne and everyday example, let’s take the academic conference as a model. Anyone who’s ever been to hear a paper or a talk given has seen the person who takes the mic with the pretense of asking a question, but who instead goes on at length about their own interests, or research, or supposed insights. This type of groan-inducing off-topic interruption may be bearable (may be!) in an academic conference, but where there’s real work to be done, it’s an unforgivable waste of time.
In fact, we don’t really want everyone to have an equal say. We want to prioritize comments and questions in a pretty obvious way. We should give priority to statements and questions that are:
1) informed;
2) directly relevant to the discussion;
3) concise; and,
4) non-repetitive of other statements that have already been made.
Stack does not prioritize these statements. In its most general form, the Stack rules actually have no way of selecting for statements or questions at all. There’s no way to force the group to vote on something, there’s no way to cut off irrelevant statements, etc. without relying purely on the charisma of the facilitator or the tacit consensus of the group. If the meeting relies on this kind of informal methods to silence off-topic comments, it can rely on those same methods to silence on-topic, relevant, comments.
In fact, because you can claim the floor long before you take it, Stack promotes disjointed, circuitous, and repetitive meetings. People replying “on the Stack” may very well be responding to a minor point made five or six speakers ago – and for that speaker who was criticized to answer, they, too, may have to wait on the stack until their commentary is no longer relevant. There are modified Stack rules that allow for direct comments, etc., but this relies on the action of the chair. At that point, you should transition over to a more chair-driven set of rules that allows structure and intervention.
What Works?
The easiest answer is just to adopt Robert’s Rules of Order. The things that encourage and promote useful and meaningful debate in formal meetings are:
1) Time limits for speakers;
2) The floor may be claimed when it is open only – that is, no lining up on the side and waiting to have your “say”;
3) Speakers may only be heard once on any given point unless no one else wishes to speak; this can be waived where, for instance, a question has been directed to someone in particular;
4) The facilitator can override off-topic comments as out of order;
5) Some way to challenge the facilitator’s ruling.
This prohibits, for instance, someone from claiming the floor to bring up new business while old business is still being debated. It ensures that meetings follow a predictable flow that can be established. No business should be discussed until a decision is taken on the matter at hand – whether it’s to table it to another meeting, or to hold a vote. These rules require action. Off-topic derailment is prevented.
This isn’t debate-club pedantry. It’s the foundational organizational tool that permits organizations to combat intentional derailments, sea-lioning,[2] the Gish gallop,[3] bad faith arguments and interruptions, or indefinite delays in addressing important issues.
If your organization uses the Stack, get rid of it. Immediately. Adopt almost any other set of rules. It is prohibiting you from acting – and if it’s not doing that right now, it’s only a matter of time before it will.
[1] Open meeting structure allows anyone to come into a meeting – let’s say, an Occupy or Palestine solidarity camp – and start adding things to the agenda, or debating topics that were previously not up for debate. This is why we urged all Palestine solidarity encampments to adopt strict rules about who was a “member” during the Student Intifada. This, we can safely say, did not happen in most instances. As a result, for instance, the students at Brown were betrayed by their “committee” – an unelected body of organizers – when they gave in to Brown’s phony concessions for “studying divestment.”
[2] A common online right-wing technique, this is the innocent “just asking questions” trick of peppering a speaker with multitudes of questions that require long and complicated answers. This wears down the speaker, and eventually derails meetings.
[3] A technique wherein the speaker says so many incorrect things at once that it takes an exponentially longer time to explain all the incorrect statements and address them sufficiently, again, leading to a meeting being overwhelmed or shutting down.
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