What a good steering committee actually does

They’re right to expect that. Most steering committees are status meetings. Someone presents a slide of green, amber and red dots, people nod, and everyone goes back to work. If a steering meeting ends without a decision, it was a status update with better chairs.

Bring decisions, not progress

The rule we use is simple: every steering meeting must make at least one decision, and the decisions go on the first page of the pack. Progress updates go at the back, for anyone who wants them.

A decision might be small. Should we include the Canadian business in the analysis? Can we interview three customers who left last year? Should the pricing work cover services as well as products? But each one moves the work, and each one is made by the people who’ll have to live with the answer.

Show the thinking while it’s changing

The worst thing a consulting team can do is disappear for eight weeks and come back with an answer. The steering committee should see the early hypotheses, including the ones that turn out wrong. That’s uncomfortable for consultants, who like to look certain. It’s essential for clients, who need to understand how the answer was reached before they can defend it to a board.

We bring one page to every meeting called "What we think now", in plain sentences, with what would change our minds. By the final meeting the recommendation is rarely a surprise, because the committee watched it form.

Keep it small and keep it short

Five people is about right. Ten is a town hall. Every extra person makes it harder to disagree openly, and a steering committee that can’t disagree can’t decide anything.

An hour is enough. If a decision needs more discussion, take it offline with the two people who disagree and bring it back next time.

Write the decisions down

Decisions made in a meeting have a way of becoming different decisions by the following week. Someone remembers it as "we’ll look into it" rather than "we agreed to do it". So we close every steering meeting by reading the decisions aloud, one sentence each, with the name of the person who’ll act on them.

That list goes out within the hour and becomes the first page of the next pack. Over ten weeks it turns into a record of how the answer was reached, which is exactly what a board will ask about at the end.

The board member’s job

When a board member sits on a steering committee, their role is easy to get wrong. They aren’t there to review management’s work or to second-guess the consultants. They’re there to say early what the board will worry about later.

The most useful thing a board member ever said in one of our steering meetings was a single question in week three: "If we do this, what do we tell the bank?" It changed the shape of the recommendation, and it meant the final board session took forty minutes instead of three hours.

Try it next time

Before your next steering meeting, read the pack and ask one question: what are we deciding today? If the answer is nothing, cancel the meeting or rewrite the pack. Your team will notice, and the next meeting will be better for it.