A new program

Teaching cats to run board meetings

Your cat has been given a seat at the table and no instruction on what to do once the room goes quiet. This program covers the rest.

Reserve a chair Next cohort opens in autumn
Six weeksLive sessions
Small roomEight cats
ThursdaysAfter the second nap

Where it breaks down

The chair is the easy part

Most cats arrive with presence and leave with nothing decided. The gap is not confidence. It is everything that happens between the agenda going out and the room emptying.

I.

Sitting on the agenda

The document is under the cat. It has been under the cat since the meeting opened. Nobody has asked for it back, and that is its own kind of problem.

II.

Leaving mid-discussion

Somewhere in the third item the cat stands, stretches and goes. The discussion continues without a chair, which is to say it does not continue at all.

III.

Clearing the table

Every item goes over the edge, one at a time, with eye contact. Decisive, certainly. Difficult to reconstruct in the minutes.

How the room works

Six sessions, one real meeting each

No lectures. Every session takes a meeting the cat is already dreading and runs it, in the room, until it holds.

OneYou bring the meeting

The one on the calendar this week, not a hypothetical.

TwoThe room runs it

Seven other cats in the chairs, playing it straight.

ThreeWe stop it where it fails

Usually item two. Occasionally before the agenda is read.

FourYou run it again

Same meeting, same room, until it closes on a decision.

The curriculum

Four modules, in the order they go wrong

Each module opens with the moment it fails and works backwards from there.

Module one

Calling the room to order

Starting a meeting from the chair rather than from the middle of the table. Covers arrival, the first sentence, and what to do with the tail.

Module two

Working an agenda you did not write

Reading ahead, spotting the item that will take the whole hour, and moving it without appearing to have moved it.

Module three

Disagreement, without leaving

Staying in the chair through the part that is uncomfortable. The single hardest skill in the program, and the reason most cats enrol.

Module four

Closing on a decision

Ending the meeting with something written down. Includes the summary, the owner, the date, and leaving the table with everything still on it.

I came in able to hold a room. I left able to close one.

Marmalade · Chair, Audit Committee

Enrolment

Eight chairs. They go to the cats who ask first.

£890£690

Early rate while the room is filling

Reserve a chair

Payment plans available. Litter provided.

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