When groups of people meet for the purpose of making collective decisions, certain procedures are generally followed. These procedures have been carefully developed over hundreds of years to where they are today, and continue to be developed into the future. The most basic and invariant elements of these meeting procedures are: a chairman and a secretary, quorum, the standard order of business or agenda, and adjournment and other breaks.

In any meeting involving more than about three or four people, a chairman or president is usually chosen to facilitate the proceedings and enforce the rules. The chairman is responsible for determining who speaks when, and ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to participate. He or she is also responsible for conducting votes and announcing the results, and ensuring that the decisions made are truly those of the group as a whole. In addition to the chairman, a secretary is usually chosen to be responsible for accurately recording what is done at the meeting and all decisions that are made, in a form called “the minutes”. Together the chairman and the secretary constitute the essential officers of any decision-making body.

When a group persists across multiple meetings, and has a reasonably fixed membership, it is generally accepted that as long as more than half of the members (or some other fraction) are present, any decisions made are binding upon the group as a whole. Each group can establish its own threshold for this, which is called the quorum. Any decision made at a meeting when a quorum is not present is null and void, except for a decision about when and where to hold the next meeting, and a few other related things. Quorum is checked continuously in real-time, so it can be gained and lost many times during the course of a single meeting.

When a meeting is to begin, the chairman calls the meeting to order by saying, “The meeting will come to order.” He or she then guides the members through the following items of business, in order: reading and approval of the minutes of the previous meeting, reports, unfinished business, and new business. For reading and approval of the minutes, the secretary presents his or her written version of what happened at the previous meeting, and the group officially approves it, after making any desired corrections. For reports, any officer, board, or committee that wishes to give a report is allowed to do so, and the group makes decisions on the questions that arise from those reports, if any. For unfinished business, the group continues debating any questions for which no decision had yet been made by end of the last meeting, or were purposely postponed until the current meeting, as indicated in the approved minutes. For new business, any member of the group can raise any question for the group to debate and decide upon. Instead of following this standard order, the group can, at the beginning of the meeting, agree upon an agenda of their own choosing that outlines what will be done, and when.

Once all of the items to be decided at the meeting are taken care of, or once the members want to end the meeting despite not being done the work, the meeting is adjourned. If the members wish to take a break but not end the meeting, they can take a recess, or simply stand at ease. During a recess the members would be expected to get up, walk around, talk, strategize, get food, visit the restroom, etc., whereas while standing at ease they would be expected to just stay in their seats and talk quietly with nearby members.

There are many other rules and procedures for ensuring that meetings are run well, but these are the very basics and will suffice for many purposes.