In preparing for review of the upcoming 74th General Service Conference's Final Agenda Items: "Discuss, Review, and Consider"
There is no hard and fast rule for the use of one or the other. Yes, the type of agenda item lends itself to the use of one of them for about every agenda item, but it is a fallacy that certain ones indicate that an advisory action will take place. What a committee does with any given item is up to the committee. Any one of them may result in the committee making a recommendation.
Having said that, as you browse through the agenda, you will see it is common for a “Discussion” to take place when the committee is reading a report, reading over a list of ideas, etc. It is more likely that a recommendation would not come out of a discussion.
You will next see that a “Review” is commonly used to when the committee is focusing on a specific item. The result of the review may be that the Conference committee may recommend something, they may view with appreciation the item, or take no action. When reviewing something, unless you want something changed, no action is taken. On the other hand, there are items listed as “Review” that always results in a recommendation – the best example is reviewing the list of future Conference dates. In that example, the committee would actually need to recommend a date. Hence, things tend to be focused rather than a more wide-ranging discussion.
If one of the terms carry a heftier chance of an advisory action taking place, it likely
is “Consider”. The reason is that Consider is taking a look at someone else’s work or someone else’s idea and seeing if you agree with it and want to take action. You/the committee may take no action, a recommendation may be made, or it may be viewed with appreciation and sent back to get more work done. For items that are at the finishing stages, yes, it is quite probable that a conference recommendation will be made. Take a look at where its used, and you’ll see it is normally focusing on one specific issue.
