Meet WITH a plan, not FOR a plan…Part 2.
Why do so many people hate meetings? One reason is that so many meetings end with no action occurring, no meaningful decisions being made (and no, setting up committee meetings, or another meeting, doesn’t count). A good leader goes into an important meeting already having thought through a plan for action, rather than expecting a plan to emerge from the varied voices in the room.
Here’s Larry Tye’s account (in his “Rising From the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class) of how E.D. Nixon orchestrated the decision to make the Montgomery Bus Boycott more than the one day symbolic protest it was as of midday on Dec. 5 when Rosa Parks was convicted of violating the bus segregation laws:
“Nixon had made sure no decision was made at the first meeting (held Friday, Dec. 2 at Dexter Ave. Baptist Church) in his absence. Before the second, he and two leading ministers—(Ralph D.) Abernathy and E.N. French—met to set the script. ‘Abernathy was sittin’ as close as me in here to you, and he leant over,’ Nixon remembered. ‘He said, “Brother Nixon, now you gon’ serve as president, ain’t-chya?” I said, “Naw, not unless’n you all don’t accept my man.” He said, “Who is your man?” I said, “Martin Luther King.” He said, “I’ll go along with it.” French said, “I’ll go along with it.” So then we had not only our recommendation, our resolution, our name, we had our president.'”
So Nixon, Abernathy and French went into that afternoon’s (Dec. 5) meeting agreed on:
*a recommendation—to continue the bus boycott;
*a resolution—stating the reasons for their actions, to be adopted that night at the mass meeting at Holt St. Baptist Church;
*a name—the Montgomery Improvement Association (a new organization around which Negroes and their allies could unite, and against which their opponents had no history that could be used to discredit it)’
*a president—the young Rev. King, an eloquent speaker, and the new pastor of black Montgomery’s most socially prominent church.
The “action” in the meeting was persuading the ministers to adopt an agenda that would anger white Montgomery; and that’s what Nixon did, bringing to bear all his moral authority and experience from decades of civil rights and labor leadership:
“I said, ‘How you gonna have a mass meeting, gonna boycott a city bus line without the white folks knowing it?'” Nixon recounted. “I said, ‘You guys have went around here and lived off these poor washerwomen all your lives and ain’t never done nothing for ’em. And now you got a chance to do something for ’em, you talkin’ about you don’t want the white folks to know it.’ I said, ‘Unless’n this program is accepted and brought into the church like a decent respectable organization….I’ll take the microphone and tell ’em the reason we don’t have a program is ’cause you all are too scared to stand on your feet and be counted. You oughta make up your mind right now that you gon’ either admit you are a grown man or concede to the fact that you are a bunch of scared boys.'”
It was not an idle threat. Because of the bus boycott’s overwhelming success that morning, everyone in that afternoon’s meeting knew that thousands of people would be at that evening’s mass meeting to hear what their community leaders would propose.
The combination of the peer pressure in that room, the pressure of their followers expected at that evening’s mass meeting, and pressure of a clear plan of action as proposed by Nixon and his allies worked. The ministers (and other community leaders at that afternoon’s meeting) adopted Nixon’s plan of action and took it to that night’s mass meeting.
