What Does a Roundtable Meaning in Business Mean?

What Does a Roundtable Meaning in Business Mean?

One of the more interesting differences between our current system and a Roundtable meaning in business, is the "stakeholder" part. The idea behind this is to have representatives from all the different perspectives involved in the discussion. This may be the best way to learn from all of them. It also allows the people on the forum to focus their comments on one specific issue or problem instead of the huge spectrum of topics that could be discussed.

Take for example this problem. You've got the small business owner, and the big picture designer. How do you deal with the communication between the two? I'm sure we could see it as a Big Picture Designer and Small Business Owner. And yet, we would recognize that there is a difference between these two perspectives.

A Big Picture Designer would like to think of their system as being able to represent the entire company at any given time. They would want to understand what the needs are, and they'd want to know if anyone else wants the same things. If they had a sense of ownership, the idea would be to keep everyone in the loop. If the designer had just one small problem, they'd let the person responsible to deal with it, rather than letting them stew over it.

However, if you were looking at it from the perspective of the big picture designer, you'd probably want to hear about every little thing that the group was doing. They would want to know exactly what people were thinking. They would also want to keep the business owners informed. Their goal would be to have a plan that would suit everyone, and they'd feel secure in knowing that the big picture designers were on the same page as everyone else.

What this would mean for those of us who were looking at this situation as having a Roundtable Meaning in Business, wouldbe that we should be looking at our problem in the same way as the big picture designer. While the designer wanted to represent the whole business, the "stakeholder" wanted to represent each and every person in the company. They were interested in how this impacted everyone, and how it impacted the business. To them, it would be more important to listen to the small business owner, because the big picture designer didn't really care. They were focused on what was good for them.

So we need to look at the big picture designer from the perspective of a stakeholder. Then, what we need to do is find out what concerns the small business owner more. Are they more concerned about communications or are they more concerned about the kind of money their business is making?

In the end, it comes down to what the big picture designer wanted to hear and what the stakeholder wanted to hear. Sometimes it's as simple as listening to the people you are closest to, and then you can actually make the business decisions that are right for everyone.