Every day in communities across America, hundreds of committees, boards, church groups, and social clubs hold meetings where they spend their time engaged in shouting matches and acrimonious debate. This book outlines the five key steps toward consensus building, and addresses the specific problems that often get in the way of a group's progress.

"Lawrence E. Susskind and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank go to great lengths to show us the shortcomings of Robert's Rules and how its rituals of procedure and majority rule often produce a righteous majority and a highly dissatisfied minority...The writing is clear and jargon-free...you'll learn more than you'll ever need to know about assigning roles and responsibilities, group problem solving and holding people to commitments...It's the kind of book that has multiple markets, from executive groups to committees to neighborhood associations. Use this book to change the way you operate meetings and you'll see greater efficiency, effectiveness and sound decision making."--Training Magazine "Lawrence E. Susskind and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank go to great lengths to show us the shortcomings of Robert's Rules and how its rituals of procedure and majority rule often produce a righteous majority and a highly dissatisfied minority...The writing is clear and jargon-free...you'll learn more than you'll ever need to know about assigning roles and responsibilities, group problem solving and holding people to commitments...It's the kind of book that has multiple markets, from executive groups to committees to neighborhood associations. Use this book to change the way you operate meetings and you'll see greater efficiency, effectiveness and sound decision making."--Training Magazine "Well written, clear, authoritative and helpful.... This book should revolutionize meetings everywhere--making them more productive, accessible to participants, and facilitating human communication and cooperation.... No one should ever go to a meeting, of any kind, anywhere, again without a copy of Breaking Robert's Rules."--Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Georgetown School of Law "Blessedly free of jargon and written in a brisk and positive style.... Can potentially make a real contribution to how people engage one another on difficult issues."--Michael Wheeler, Harvard Business School "This book is revolutionary and hilarious. Revolutionary because the authors provide a new framework that will radically change the way organizations make decisions and resolve conflicts. Hilarious because it will remind the reader of every stupid or senseless meeting they've endured."--Warren Bennis, University of Southern California and author of On Becoming a Leader "This clear guide to non-hierarchal decision-making will be a boon for churches tryiing to find consensus in congregational affairs rather then the traditional solution of majority rule."-- Phyllis Tickle, author of The NIght Offices

Lawrence E. Susskind is the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at MIT and head of the Public Disputes Program at Harvard Law School. An experience mediator, he is Founder of the Consensus Building Institute and author of Dealing with an Angry Public: The Mutual Gains Approach to Resolving Disputes (with Patrick T. Field) and The Consensus Building Handbook (with Sarah McKearnan and Jennifer Thomas-Larmer). Jeffrey L. Cruikshank is an experienced editor, the author of numerous of interest to managers, and published novelist. His first book collaboration with co-author Susskind was Breaking the Impasse, published in 1987.