A friend’s daughter is learning to drive, and to say that it’s been stressful is an understatement.
There’s so much implicit, unspoken knowledge and skill that goes into operating a car. After 30+ years of doing it, it’s hard to remember all the things you need to share that a new driver wouldn’t know.
When I was learning to drive, I remember asking the instructor what I’m sure he thought was a ridiculous question: “Where do you look when you’re behind the wheel?” I wasn’t sure if I should focus on the car right in front of me, look further out in the distance, or somewhere in between. The answer is all of the above, of course, but my 16½-year-old self couldn’t grasp that kind of constant environmental scanning until I sat down and did it.
That experience popped back into my head recently when someone asked me for help setting up new steering committees. She’s leading a large, cross-functional project that will have at least three levels of governance – an executive steering committee, a functional leader group, and a working-level team to oversee the day-to-day work. In her experience (and mine), steering committees often start strong but devolve into chaos after the first few months. Stakeholders stop showing up or don’t actively participate because they have “more important” things to do.
To avoid a similar fate, I suggested she change where both she and the group members are looking. You don’t steer a car by looking backward, so why do corporate steering committees default to a forum for updating people on things that have already happened?
Instead of the traditional death-by-PowerPoint readout, steering committee meetings should be active, time-sensitive planning sessions. Whether you meet once a week, once a month, or once a quarter, every meeting agenda should cover things like:
- What’s supposed to be happening with this program in the next month/quarter?
- How well-positioned are teams to do that work?
- What do we need from this group to ensure teams can keep moving forward?
Answers to that last question can include decisions the group needs to make, questions only they can answer, and conflicts or differences of opinion you haven’t been able to resolve at a lower level. Busy people are more likely to show up for meetings when they know they have an active role to play. The clearer you can be about the expectations for committee members up front, the more successful the group will be.
Case in point – while leading the kickoff meeting for one new governance program, I asked the program lead, working team, and executive committee members what it meant for the former to “approve” a project as part of this effort. Executives saw the gesture as symbolic; they were there to raise potential conflicts and eventually give their blessing, but every single one assumed someone else would be putting up the resources to do the actual work. Who was that “someone else?” They didn’t know or care.
The working-level committee’s view was radically different. To them, saying “we approve” was a promise to provide resources and add the project to the portfolio of work that that leader’s team was already doing. This was obviously a huge disconnect. Had we not uncovered it early, the prognosis for both the committee and the program would not have been good.
Another word of wisdom – be explicit about what you expect group members to do between meetings. That’s where most real work gets done, but I hear time and again, “They said they’d work on it but showed up and hadn’t done a single thing.”
Success here comes back to clear expectations and allowing time for people to get prepared. If you have a list of questions you need your committee to answer, send them to everyone with this request: do whatever research you need and consult with your teams before we gather next. Explain that the meeting is a time to bring individual points of view together and produce a single unified answer.
What if people still show up unprepared or don’t do what they said they would?
It’s a common problem, particularly when the steering committee consists of people higher up in the food chain than you. It’s also a question that has to be answered early and explicitly agreed to by everyone before the first meeting ever convenes. The hard truth is this – if no one is willing to hold anyone accountable for the responsibilities that come with being part of this steering committee, don’t bother forming it in the first place.
What’s the alternative? Try asking an existing governing body, like an executive committee or program management office (PMO), to oversee your project, too. They already have people, processes, and power to track work and ensure decisions get made. This approach, known as “piggybacking,” prevents the addition of yet another meeting to the calendar, and it saves you from having to reinvent the wheel. Just make sure that the group you choose to work with is 1) focused on the future and 2) takes their responsibility to enable progress seriously.
Driving anything big, whether it’s a car or a corporate initiative, isn’t easy. It takes a unique set of skills, most of which are best learned by doing. It’s worth the effort. A great steering committee does more than just observe—they actively navigate, leading the business to a new and exciting place.
