Why Strategy Committees Don’t Always Work

It’s probably worth sharing a bias I have: I hate committees. I hate them even more when they’re used in planning processes. 

As my wife would attest, there’s nothing that frustrates me more than a group decision-making process. If we’re going to dinner, I’m a “say what you’re in the mood for, and let one person decide” kind of guy. I stay absolutely silent. 

Of course, committees can be used well. In the book In Search of Excellence, Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman capture the bad and the good quite well. They write: 

“Most of the institutions that we spend time with are ensnared in massive reports that have been massaged by various staffs and sometimes, quite literally, hundreds of staffers. All the life is pressed out of the ideas; only an iota of personal accountability remains. [...] However, life in most of the excellent companies is dramatically different. Yes, they too have task forces, for example. But one is more apt to see a swarm of task forces that last five days, have a few members, and result in line operators doing something differently rather than the thirty-five-person task force that lasts eighteen months and produces a 500-page report.”

Given my current role, I mostly encounter committees used in strategic planning efforts. They too run the gamut from smaller, productive task forces to stifling 35-person affairs. Reflecting on these, I think the differences mostly arise from the different contexts in which they are formed. 

Some observations from my experience:

“Representative” committees tend to slide into self-interests. 

Just look at Congress!

In organizations, I often see Noah’s Arc committees—i.e., two from each department.

This is reasonable when there are legitimate reasons why departments have different perspectives. For example, left to their own devices, marketing professionals might approach a problem in a different way than risk management professionals. This happens because those two groups have different frameworks and approaches to guide their work, which they have learned over years of training and experience.  

 In this case, creating formal structures to bridge their work makes sense. They can find a better answer together than apart. 

However, when these committees are less about different, legitimate approaches and more about the individuals representing the interests of their respective departments, that’s a problem. 

First, it assumes that each unit has a  different objective function than the organization as a whole. And second, the committee becomes about fighting for interests that are in conflict rather than a common effort to find the best solutions. 

I’ve seen this dynamic arise when the organization works in a siloed or overly hierarchical way in which people feel like they need to fight for a seat at the table due to a lack of appropriate information sharing and collaboration. 

Put another way, the committee doesn’t work well because the organization itself doesn't work well.  

Attempts to use committees to “build trust” in a process or decision often fail.

Part of the reason leaders create Noah’s Arc committees is a desire to build trust in a process or decision. 

There’s nothing wrong with this instinct. Many organizations are run through structures like Executive Committees, Coordinating Committees, and the like. 

Where it works best, committees deliver a legitimate voice to people and there’s a foundation of trust. 

Where I have seen this go wrong is when organizations attempt to form committees because there’s not a deep well of trust. The problem with this approach is that it almost never delivers.  

The average person in, say, the IT department, if they don’t believe their voice is being heard today, won’t be convinced that a process is legitimate just because someone from their department (who they might not ever talk to) was present at some meeting. 

The work to build an inclusive culture is important, but it won’t necessarily be solved by a committee. It’s the day-to-day actions of leaders that matter more. 

Committees’ processes to make decisions unhelpfully avoid conflict. 

If you’ve ever participated in a group, you know it’s hard for them to make decisions! In strategy processes, I’ve seen this manifest in several ways. 

First, if the group is too oriented toward consensus, they can sand off the most interesting aspects of potential strategies or recommend “a little of this, a little of that” solutions, which are strategically incoherent. 

Second, if the group includes junior leaders, they can shy away from solutions that require change by those above them. It’s hard for them to say, “The problem is that the leadership team sucks, and we’ll never make progress if they don’t improve.” 

What are better approaches?

1. Instead of a “committee,” form a “working group” or “task force.”  

The change in semantics is part of creating a more action-oriented approach to the group. 

As part of creating the group, clarify the specific deliverable, timeline, and who has decision rights. 

For example: Is the group simply submitting their ideas to the decision maker, or do they have the right to make the decision themselves?

2. Form the task force with only the relevant people. 

Rather than a Noah’s Arc approach, form the group with only those who have the right knowledge to address the issue–and no more. (That is, invite someone from Finance not because Finance needs to be represented, but because you want someone who understands finance.) 

Then, instruct the chosen team members to work in an inclusive way (examples: sharing updates widely, requesting feedback from all audiences, and pulling in new people to the group when necessary). This approach is more likely to deliver on the action orientation, while enabling others to feel like they were able to contribute to the solution. 

3. Help the group avoid watered-down solutions. 

Here, leaders can play a role in helping a group avoid sanding down the interesting edges from their proposal by doing things like:

• Explicitly asking for bold suggestions

• Structuring the request (for instance, “I’d like you to provide one reasonable idea, one ‘if we only have 2 days to implement’ idea, and one ‘if there were no constraints’ idea.”)

• Helping the group understand what existing constraints they should challenge

4. If the team hasn’t worked together, invest in building the team.

In Harvard professor Amy Edmondson’s excellent book Teaming, she describes a four-step process to building a team: Enrollment, Preparation, Trial, and Reflection. 

Here’s a quick overview of the four steps: 

Enrollment

Edmondson writes: “A critical feature of enrollment is communicating to others that they are being specifically selected for a project or role. This builds intellectual and emotional commitment to the work.”

Because serving on the working group is likely to come on top of everyone’s existing work, it is helpful to shift this role from an obligation (i.e., a negative frame) to a recognition of the talents that each person brings.  

Preparation

Do not take for granted that the members of the team understand what their role is, what they’re trying to accomplish, or that they will work effectively together. 

Instead, treat this team like any other team that is starting up. They should get together to discuss all of the things covered above, and build relationships and team norms. 

Proper investment in the team ensures a process that unfolds effectively.

Trial & Reflection

Because the work of strategy is about the path to an unknown future, the team should have a learning mindset in their work. It should be about testing ideas and ways of working, and then reflecting on those experiments to discard or improve them. 

The top leader can help create a learning mindset in the working group by communicating what a learning mindset could look like and—more importantly—by providing assurance that the leader will support the team when experiments fail, or when bold concepts turn out to be unworkable. 

In short, creating a learning mindset is about removing fear and evolution from the equation.