Preparing a steering committee that decides
A steering committee that listens to thirty minutes of slides and leaves without a decision has been expensive. Prepared around variances and decisions to make, it fits on one page.
1 · Variances
2 · Milestones
3 · Decisions to make
Sent the day before, read before the meeting
Many steering committees look like a series of presentations. Each project manager scrolls through slides, everything is "in progress", and the meeting ends without a single decision.
A committee exists to decide
The committee brings together the people who can make trade-offs: priorities, resources, budget. Their time is scarce. It should be spent on what only they can do, not on hearing what they could read.
One page, three parts
- variances: in our example, +106 hours on the line relocation, +56 on the extension study, +45 on the packaging line;
- milestones: the production restart holds, but the buffer protecting it is exhausted;
- decisions to make: approve the 6-hour reinforcement on reassembly, and settle the priority between the extension study and the packaging line.
Send before, decide during
The page goes out the day before. Everyone reads it beforehand. In the meeting, nobody presents any more: you discuss the variances that raise questions and make the listed decisions. The minutes fit in a few lines: what was decided, by whom, by when.
What it takes
Such a page cannot be prepared the night before from ten files. It requires progress and variances to be kept up to date continuously, by the people doing the work. That is what lets the committee read today's situation, not last month's.