I would send out one notice to everyone about the group, and ask "interested people to contact me". Use that to form your group. From that point forward, schedule the individual sessions with only that group. This lets everyone know what is going on and feel included, but you won't have every session turn into a free-for-all with different attendance every time. I think you want some consistency for a group like this.

If it is just a group of friends at work talking about it, you could keep it under the radar. However, it does not seem like it is like that. Be careful about people not bad mouthing anyone and talking in general terms.

Anonymous wrote:Considering that people can feel bad about being excluded and upper management can flip out if they hear of things going on second hand, I'd be very transparent and invite everyone.

+ 1

Run it by your immediate boss and get an ok from upper management and let them know about it (your immediate boss and boss's boss). Cross your t's and dot your i's. Follow the correct process and then invite everyone. If you want it to be manageable, make it clear that this is sort of an informal sharing of ideas in spare time (lunch etc) and that it should not take away time from official work. Start small so you do not make waves and then expand based on the need and the tolerance of management.

Considering that people can feel bad about being excluded and upper management can flip out if they hear of things going on second hand, I'd be very transparent and invite everyone.

I want to start a group at work to talk about big issues facing our profession. It will be a simple once a month (or so) lunchtime chat. I've run the idea by a group of individuals that happened to be on a relevant email chain- and we've scheduled the first date. I can't decide now whether to let everybody in our division know about it (most wouldn't show up) or add all the individuals I think would be interested or just stick with the small test group. I want to balance considering everyone's feeling with having a manageable size group. Is this the kind of thing people who go to business school learn how to handle? (I am new to middle management- and this is an initiative entirely on my own to get people excited about our work).