I
just received word that an old friend of thirty years, Michael Doyle,
died at home in San Francisco. The wake is this weekend.
When I first met Michael I was working on San Francisco public education and he was finishing up the research and writing of a book that became a significant force in modern commerce: How to Make Meetings Work (co-authored with David Strauss). We were in the same building.
Michael was a warm, kind and generous man. His contribution to commerce was immense (Bio 1, Bio 2). Few meetings in America are conducted without using the elements that Michael introduced in his book and his training company from "facilitator" to "public note taker." It is hard for us to remember the pre-Michael Doyle era, when meetings were run on an authoritarian model, largely based on experience with Roberts Rules of Order...a legacy of Congressional political structure.
Michael transformed the way
businesses work and significantly enhanced the creative potential in
any group by giving voice to the "seldom heard voices" that are
important to group vitality.
Michael worked with Arthur Anderson when the computer consulting section was out-earning the CPA section. The problem was never resolved and the competition within the company led to confused ethics and its ultimate demise in the Enron scandal.
Michael was comfortable with CEOs and was effective in his role of working with top management. He spent much of his life trying to migrate his brilliant discoveries about running meetings to the meeting room computer world.
I will miss Michael and so will everyone who knew him. The world of commerce will some day honor Michael Doyle with the appreciation he deserves for a major and pervasive contribution.