From wikipedia:
“Rat-holing is a term used to describe a conversation or process that has deviated from its original productive purpose into a generally unproductive but long and winding detour that eventually comes to a dead end.”
“The original discussion purpose may be to agree on a course of action. However, if one or more people rat-hole into a specific point of the discussion then the discussion stalls with no actionable outcome.”
Back from a trip to Belgrade, I was catching up with my reading last night, and saw a reference to rat-holing on 43folders. I’m sure that like me, you recognize this behaviour as a regular occurrence in meetings that lack a coherent and engaging goal.
When people aren’t engaged around a shared purpose – in a meeting, a project, or a programme – they lose their way and find their own purposes, they rat-hole to issues they care about.
Rat-holing is a warning signal, look out for it!
— Jason Bates
Thanks for the post! This might be a short article, yet it gives us idea about rat-holing, what it is and what it does.
This really helps us a lot. Great job!
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