Use Committees Constructively and Bust Bureaucracy
When committees don't work, it's because they're being misused. Here are some simple rules for burying bureaucracy by putting committees in their proper place: as venues for collaboration, not rule making.
CIO — A CIO showed me an e-mail from one of his staff describing the formation of a new committee to investigate outsourcing some of their applications engineering services, choose a vendor, let a contract, manage spending, and measure compliance. He was asked to approve the membership list.
"What do you think of this?" he asked me.
"It doesn't feel right," I replied. "Didn't you make it clear that every manager's job includes continually seeking ways to save money? And that includes the smart use of vendors?"
"I sure did!"
"And who's supposed to police that?" I asked.
"Their bosses, of course," was his logical reply.
"And don't you already have an IT procurement group to research sourcing alternatives, help the managers form relationships and buy stuff?" I continued.
"We do," he replied.
"So why do you need this committee?"
He didn't have an answer, and that's when I began to wonder if people form committees whenever they want help from peers, even if a project team—which would go away when the job is done—would do just as well. Committees generally take on a life of their own.
More cynically, I wondered if people form committees when they want to duck personal accountability, or perhaps just when they get lonely in their cubicles or offices.
Committees have a useful purpose. But too often, they're bureaucratic, disempowering, or, at a minimum, a source of ambiguous accountabilities and confusion. This column explores what can go wrong and defines the proper role of committees.
What's Wrong With Committees
Many organizations are overrun with committees, in spite of managers universally complaining that they spend too much time in meetings. Committees are expensive and are often not very productive. They may slow decision making, or just waste a lot of people's time.
Indeed, in some cases, committees are destructive. They confuse individual accountabilities and may disempower managers who should have the authority to make decisions on their own.
For example, this outsourcing committee, with its broad mandate, could attempt to force managers to buy from its chosen vendor, whether or not doing so is in those managers' best interests. Or it might attempt to deny managers the right to buy from other vendors, even when (in a particular manager's unique line of business) an alternative vendor is the right choice.
If that is how the committee operates, then managers will become disempowered and can no longer be held accountable for the costs or quality of their individual businesses within the business.
