Information. Send it ahead.
- The schedule and where it stands
- Test results and the open defect count
- Budget consumed to date
- Workstream statuses, however they're colored
- Anything that could have been read in advance
Read it before you walk in.
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Governance · An agenda for the hour
The steering committee that earns its hour
Most steering committees are expensive status theater. How to run one that makes real decisions and is worth the hour a room full of executives gives it.
I've sat in a lot of steering committees. A program lead walks a room of senior executives through a deck they were sent two days earlier. Statuses flick by and heads nod. Someone asks a clarifying question about a timeline. Then the hour ends, calendars reclaim everyone, and the only thing that's changed about the program is how much leadership time it has spent watching a slideshow.
That's reporting dressed up as governance, and it happens every month in an hour of the most expensive calendar time the organization has.
The executives in the room are the people best placed to call it out. They're usually too polite or too busy to say so, which is how it survives on programs where the stakes are far too high to waste a single one of those hours.
1hr
Every month, of the most expensive calendar time the organization has
72h
Ahead of the room, the pre-read goes out so it can actually be read
3
Buckets on the agenda: decisions, risks and escalations
2or3
Decisions a committee should be able to name from the hour it just spent
Status goes in the pre-read, so the agenda can be decisions
If the hour is for decisions, the agenda follows from that. Status goes out as a tight pre-read 72 hours ahead, early enough to actually be read, and nobody narrates it in the room. What's left fits in three buckets: decisions that need executive authority, risks that need someone senior to accept them, and escalations the team has raised and can't clear on its own.
Point of order
The deck gets walked through in the room. Send it 72 hours ahead and open the meeting at the first decision. Narrating a pre-read trains people not to read it.
Purpose
The hour is for what nobody below the room can decide
A steering committee exists to do the one thing the project team can't do for itself: make the decisions and clear the obstacles that nobody below it has the authority to resolve. Everything else is information, and information doesn't need a meeting.
Attendees
The invite list decides whether it works
You need the people with real authority and real budget, the ones who can say yes in the room and have it stick.
I've watched a program stall for a month because the one person who could approve a scope cut sent a stand-in with no authority. The stand-in did what stand-ins do: noted the issue and promised to raise it.
So be ruthless about the invite list. Fewer people, each with the power to act, will get more done than a crowded room of observers.
Point of order
Delegates attend for the decision maker. Cancel and rebook rather than go ahead. A session that can't decide costs more than one that didn't happen.
Once a decision has to leave the room to be made, you don't have a steering committee anymore. You have a pre-meeting for a meeting that'll happen somewhere you aren't.
-
5 min
Exceptions
Only what the pre-read got wrong.
Point of order
Everything is green, month after month. Ask what would have to be true for a workstream to report amber, and whether anyone ever has.
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25 min
Decisions
The two or three calls stuck above the program team's pay grade. Each one arrives as options, with a recommendation and a named owner.
These are the executive acts. Only this room can do them:
- Release budget
- Settle a scope fight between two divisions
- Lean on a vendor relationship
- Hold or move a go-live date
- Accept and own a risk somebody senior has to carry
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15 min
Risks
Someone senior accepts the risk, funds the mitigation or owns the consequence, and the minutes name who.
Point of order
The same risk shows up three sessions running. By the third session it's an unmade decision. Reframe it as one and force the call.
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10 min
Escalations
Cross-functional fights, vendor issues and resourcing gaps. If it's been raised twice and it's still stuck, it belongs here.
Anything that isn't a decision, a risk or an escalation is information, and a document carries it faster than an hour of executive time.
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5 min
Confirm
Read back every decision, its owner and its date. If there are none, say so out loud.
Most of the fix is one question at the end of every session: what got decided? Hold yourself to the answer. A committee that can't name two or three decisions from the hour it just spent has shown it wasn't needed.
Point of order
The minutes record attendance and topics instead of decisions and owners. Change the template. If the minutes have no decision column, the meeting won't produce decisions.
Minutes, for next month's session
1Invite only people who can decide in the room, and rebook if the decision maker sends a delegate.YouNext session
2Send status 72 hours ahead as a pre-read and don't narrate it.You72 hours before
3Build the agenda from decisions, risks someone senior has to accept, and escalations raised twice.YouNext session
4Give the minutes a decision column with an owner and a date.YouNext session
5Spend the last five minutes reading back what got decided.The room0:55 to 1:00
Adjourned at 1:00. Five decisions on the record, each with an owner and a date.
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