Boring meetings

I sympathized with Tyler Cowen's piece In Favor of Boring Meetings although I find it hard to sit through them. This sentence caught my eye since I am reading Robert Rubin's In An Uncertain World:

Attendees feel like insiders who have a real voice in decisions. This boosts their motivation to implement ideas discussed as a group. For this reason it is especially important to listen to the blowhards and the obstructionists, who otherwise would pursue their own agendas rather than support a common plan.

This is similar to his description of meetings and he sat through while in the NEC with the Clinton admnistration and the participatory process of decision making that he liked.

But the point is that in our process, everybody had a fair and full say. Not only did that lead to better decisions because all views were considered, but the participants also bought into those decisions, despite their reservations, because they felt fully invested in the decision-making process. (p. 142)

What might have looked messy to outsiders was actually a process of deliverate and open discussion, of smart, committed people engaging in debate as a way of getting to the best decision. (p. 144)