Don't Let Meetings Become Mere Formality: The Practical Code for Solving Grassroots Problems, Seen Through "Three Postponements"
This dialogue meeting had two main purposes: first, to provide on-the-spot responses to problems previously raised by officers and soldiers; and second, to further investigate and identify the contradictions and difficulties existing at the grassroots level, and to follow up on efforts to resolve hardships and provide assistance. In the view of Section Chief Zhang of the regiment's political work office, planning a meeting like this should have been well within his grasp, so he immediately set to work drafting a plan after receiving the assignment. Drawing on past experience, he carefully considered details such as the time and venue of the meeting and the agenda for participants, and quickly placed the plan on the regimental leadership's desk. However, after reading the activity plan, one regimental leader set it aside and instead began asking: "The procedures are prepared in great detail, but what about the main problems raised earlier by the grassroots—the 'Iron Cavalry Maker' (铁骑创客) studio not running smoothly, the aging housing facilities for temporary family visits, and others? How have those been resolved? How are we going to respond to the officers and soldiers?" Section Chief Zhang was taken aback and stammered: "Uh… they're being pushed forward, but haven't been resolved yet…"
"'Being pushed forward'—pushed to where, exactly? 'Not resolved'—where exactly is it stuck?" Seeing that Section Chief Zhang could not answer, the regimental leader continued: "The 'Iron Cavalry Maker' studio's facilities and venue were equipped long ago. Grassroots officers and soldiers have raised the issue multiple times—they don't know how the work should be carried out, where personnel should be drawn from, or how to specifically develop people—yet we have been slow to produce a workable plan. The old debts haven't been cleared, and now we're opening a new meeting. How do we respond to the officers and soldiers? What is the point of holding this meeting? If this goes on, we will lose the trust of the officers and soldiers. When problems arise, will they still be willing to speak up?"
And so, the meeting was pressed "pause" for the first time. Section Chief Zhang returned and immediately worked together with the heads of the relevant functional departments to go through each problem previously raised by officers and soldiers one by one, and to define measures item by item.
After a busy spell, when he came back to report again, Section Chief Zhang was stumped once more: "It says here that 'the organs will strengthen guidance and mentoring'—tell me specifically, how will it be strengthened? Who will provide guidance? How often? How will the results be measured?"
"Measures must be operable, implementable, and capable of producing results. You can't just write principles and point directions—otherwise, at the implementation stage, things will very easily become mere formality." Measured against the requirements raised by the regimental leader, Section Chief Zhang continued to refine every detail of the problem-solving measures, elaborating on each item in accordance with the functional responsibilities of the organs.
On the third submission, the plan specified the various measures, the specific persons responsible, and the deadlines for completion, achieving accountability down to the individual and timelines down to the day. Section Chief Zhang and the several organ cadres who had formulated the measures all felt they were fully prepared this time and that the meeting would surely be held as scheduled. Unexpectedly, the leader still had questions after reviewing the plan: "Quite a few measures have been formulated, but have grassroots opinions been solicited? Have you conducted research visits to the relevant companies? Assembling specialists and backbone personnel from various fields to serve as 'makers' (创客) in the studio—will that affect the daily training work of grassroots units? 'Improving supporting facilities for temporary family-visit housing'—what specific facilities? What do officers and soldiers call for most urgently, and what is in shortest supply? How large is the gap?"
Faced with this string of questions, Section Chief Zhang turned red in the face. In order to make progress quickly, he and the heads of several functional sections had drawn on their past experience serving in battalions and companies, settled on the measures after a brief discussion, and genuinely could not answer the leader's questions.
"That criticism was well deserved!" Back in the office, Section Chief Zhang still felt his face burning. The leader's words rang in his ears like an alarm bell: "Working behind closed doors cannot produce problem-solving measures that match reality. To resolve grassroots difficulties, you must go down to the grassroots."
The meeting was postponed again. Section Chief Zhang and other organ cadres fanned out to conduct research visits in battalions and companies, consulting the soldiers through forums, questionnaires, and heart-to-heart conversations, and gaining firsthand understanding of the "gap" between organ decision-making and grassroots reality: some measures seemed perfectly reasonable to the organs, but were difficult to implement at the grassroots due to constraints of venue and time; some work standards appeared clear and explicit, yet overlooked the differences in mission characteristics between different units, becoming a "one-size-fits-all" approach… After several days, Section Chief Zhang came to a deep realization: sitting in an office, you cannot come up with "golden ideas."
Based on the grassroots conditions learned through this round of research, Section Chief Zhang revised and improved the meeting plan once more. After listing the problem inventory and the corresponding solutions, this dialogue meeting—which had gone through "one twist after another"—was finally convened.
At the meeting, the Party committee organs provided detailed responses to the problems previously raised by the grassroots. Officers and soldiers had their doubts answered, and then raised more than ten additional questions, covering both individual practical difficulties and unit development challenges. For those with clear regulatory basis that needed to be resolved promptly, the Party committee organs responded on the spot; for those requiring further study and deliberation, clear deadlines for response and resolution were established.
"No buck-passing, no going around in circles (车轱辘话). It's the same kind of meeting, but the feeling is completely different." A grassroots officer-and-soldier representative attending the meeting remarked with feeling.
After the dialogue meeting concluded, the regiment drew broader lessons from the experience and used the occasion to organize organ cadres in a discussion centered on "the view of political achievements in organ work" (机关工作中的政绩观). The regimental Party committee leadership took the lead in establishing "iron rules" (铁规矩): meetings for which agenda items have no resolution plan are to be postponed without exception; plans in which measures have not been elaborated are not to be issued without exception; personnel who have failed to honor commitments are to be held accountable without exception.
From this, they also established three mechanisms—a research-first mechanism (调研前置机制): before major work deployments, Party committee organs must conduct thorough research to prevent "off-the-top-of-the-head decision-making" (拍脑门决策); an effectiveness co-evaluation mechanism (成效共评机制): a "look-back" review is conducted each quarter, with the satisfaction of grassroots officers and soldiers serving as a hard benchmark; and a negative-list mechanism (负面清单机制): individuals and matters that emphasize form over substance and produce no real results are to be publicly reported, establishing a clear orientation that values solid work (实干), solid performance (实绩), and solid results (实效).
Recently, Staff Officer Ding of the organs' propaganda and security section took the lead in overseeing a project to renovate the parade ground lighting. Rather than rushing to draft a plan, she first went to each company to hear the opinions of officers and soldiers, and ultimately produced a plan that won broad acceptance by taking into account the actual conditions of the garrison and various other factors.
"Every meeting can solve real problems, and every measure has someone keeping watch over its implementation. In the past, some of the measures set by the organs were indeed difficult to implement, resulting in many meetings being held while problems went unsolved. Now it's different—measures are set in detail, responsibilities are pressed down firmly, and we can all see it." Said Instructor Kang of the regiment's command-and-control company.
The two-way dialogue meeting concluded some time ago, yet the experience has left the regiment's Party committee organs with much to reflect on. Assistant Pang Xiyue of the support office said: "Now when I carry out work, I often ask myself three questions—Has the problem been solved? Does the grassroots accept it? Can it be implemented and produce results?"
Holding meetings is an important way to deploy work and resolve problems, but in practice certain "strange phenomena" (怪象) have emerged: some leading cadres seem to have only one method for driving work forward—holding meetings—and call meetings for matters great and small, resulting in "major meetings every three days, minor meetings every day"; some meeting content that one person could clearly explain requires multiple leaders to speak one after another, "a meeting lasting a whole day, with no end to the talking," turning small, short meetings into large, long ones by sheer force; some units arbitrarily expand the range of participants in order to demonstrate the level of importance attached or to make the "scene look good"; and there are individual organ cadres who have fallen into the trap of "coming from meetings and going back to meetings," treating the act of having held a meeting and having spoken at it as equivalent to having implemented the work, and who, when actually facing grassroots officers and soldiers, can only offer high-sounding platitudes (冠冕堂皇的套话)…
This inevitably calls to mind the years of war and fire, when commanders at all levels who had fought their way through a hail of bullets would often sit on the ground and complete a coordination meeting in a very short time—going straight to the point, discussing collectively, and making decisions on the spot, with great efficiency. This shows that the length of a meeting or the scale of the "scene" is not the fundamental issue; the key to holding a meeting still lies in whether it produces real results.
Comrade Deng Xiaoping said: "Everything we do—holding meetings, making reports, passing resolutions, and any other work—is for the purpose of solving problems." If one departs from the purpose of "solving problems," then no matter how grand the meeting's scale or how many people attend, it is nothing but formalism—"holding meetings for the sake of holding meetings." The organs of a certain regiment of the Xinjiang Military Region postponed their meeting three times, which may seem to have cost some time, but in reality they were doing the work ahead of schedule. "Meetings for which there is no resolution plan are to be postponed without exception" further reflects the resolve to drive work forward.
It is hoped that at all levels, before planning to convene a meeting, one will think clearly about what the purpose of the meeting actually is, approach it with the boldness to "point directly at the problem" (直指问题), make scientific overall arrangements for all types of meetings, avoid holding meetings that need not be held, keep necessary meetings as short as possible, ensure that "not one irrelevant person is added and not one relevant person is missing," discard useless "grand scenes" and "empty scaffolding" (花架子), and truly make meetings produce real results.