Do people know what they''re doing on Steering Committees?
“We’re here to make decisions and ask the ‘hard’ questions” was the most common response to the question of the Steering Committee’s role.
This was often reinforced by the project managers who also saw the steering committee as a way of getting business involvement, getting the decisions they wanted and ensuring ‘they’ (the committee) approved all of the key decisions (thereby taking all of the responsibility for the project’s outcomes).
When queried about the governance team’s ability to perform their role effectively in the light of the lack of governance training or support structures several project managers said, in effect, “They’re experienced business people so they understand the impacts of their decisions.”
Wrong decisions
This level of decision-making confidence was not shared by many steering committee members. They felt very vulnerable when making decisions. “We take what we hope is the right decision, but even those of us who have been on many steering committees don’t really understand the downstream implications of many our decisions a lot of the time. It’s just a combination of business judgement and hope!”
Effective steering committee decision making is not helped by the most common decision making approach — the project team puts up an argument for the committee to agree too.
Sitting in on steering committees we have heard a number of plausible arguments for or against a particular strategy or decision. Most times the recommended outcome is focused on increasing the project’s likelihood of success (often at the expense of the business’s success). Because the steering committee is wrongly too focused on project outcomes it agrees too readily.
Wrong focus
What is missing is the governance team’s necessary primary focus on the business outcomes and their associated benefits.
To many governance teams ‘governance’ only consists of:
- project oversight (monitoring and measuring)
- project control, direction and decision-making.
IE Being the overseer.
But project governance also consists of
- action (to ‘steer’ the project into the business)
- mentoring of the project leadership team
- delivering the full business value.
Diminished value
Failure to acknowledge the ‘active’ role of project governance dramatically diminishes the value of governance.
Understanding and pursuing this ‘active’ role is a sign of governance maturity. It also dramatically increases the project’s likelihood of success. But it does require some mentoring, education and coaching in the Steering Committee role.
You can get started by reading the TOP ebook, "The 26 dimensions of project governance"
