The Deputy Secretary General at the Prime Minister’s Office chaired the opening ceremony of the seminar for directors and chargés de mission at the Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday 28 June 2018 as from 8:30 a.m. This seminar was organized by the Focal Point for Results-Based Management (FP/RBM/PMO), with the support of the Coordination Unit of the Programme for the Modernisation of the Administration through the introduction of Results-Based Management (PROMAGAR).

       The main objective of this seminar, on the theme “Techniques for Conducting a Meeting”, was to strengthen the capacities of directors and chargés de missions with regard to preparing, organizing and conducting meetings, including follow-up on resulting guidelines.       

       Two personalities were invited to facilitate the seminar, namely Louis Marie ABOGO NKONO (former Secretary General at the Prime Minister’s Office and former Minister of State Property and Land Tenure) and Bernard MESSENGUE AVOM (former Minister of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, Social Economy and Handicrafts and former Minister of Public Works). It was moderated by Professor PEKASSA NDAM Gérard Martin, Technical Adviser and Head of the Division of Public and Institutional Affairs.

The following issues were addressed by experts in their presentations:

• types of meetings, classified according to their nature, purpose, type and capacity of session chairman;
• prerequisites for the organization of an effective meeting;
• administrative and material preparation of a meeting;
• techniques for conducting a meeting;
• main tools for monitoring the implementation of instructions, recommendations, arbitrations or decisions resulting from meetings.

During discussions following the presentations of various experts, meeting participants expressed some preoccupations particularly regarding:

• the management of disruptions during a meeting, specifically in case the disruption is provoked by an official at the PMO;
• the periodicity of Ministerial Councils and Cabinet Meetings;
• the taking into account of political aspects in the processing of files by technical structures at the PMO;
• the standard number of meetings required to settle a case or process a file.            

       Regarding the management of disruptions, experts recalled the qualities required by a coordinator to properly conduct a meeting. Thanks to his competence (good mastery of the file) and attitude (humility, listening capacity, authority, strictness, intellectual honesty…), the session chairman can bring the deviants back to their senses. If a chairman is dealing with people with erratic behaviour or fanatics, he has special police powers to throw out those disrupting the meeting. The essential thing is to focus on achieving the targeted objectives of the meeting.

       Concerning the periodicity of Ministerial Councils, experts previously recalled that in a presidential constitutional system, the President of the Republic, Head of State defines the policy of the nation through various channels, without any obligation for Ministerial Councils, as can be observed in the French parliamentary system. As for Cabinet Meetings, which used to hold twice per month, they now held on a monthly basis considering numerous other inter-ministerial meetings regularly chaired by the Prime Minister, Head of Government, as part of monitoring and evaluating Government’s implementation of the policy defined by the President of the Republic, Head of State.

            With regard to the standard number of meetings required to settle a case or process a file, it was requested that the relevance of each meeting convened should be ensured to avoid unnecessarily increasing their frequency.

       Following deliberations, the Deputy Secretary General at the Prime Minister’s Office thanked Ministers Louis Marie ABOGO NKONO and Bernard MESSENGUE AVOM for the knowledge and experiences shared, and the Point Focal/RBM/PMO team for the proper organization of the seminar.      

       He further invited participants to capitalize on knowledge acquired during the seminar for their daily work to ensure that the Prime Minister’s Office remains a showcase and melting pot for the Cameroonian public administration.

       The seminar rounded off with lunch offered at the Hilton Hotel restaurant.