August 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 8

Creating Effective Steering Committees

By Jan Young, CFPIM

The use of committees to make major business decisions is a common practice in industry worldwide. An appropriately structured and effective committee can bring the skills and experience of many people to bear on a problem or an issue and can greatly improve the odds of making excellent decisions.

Although this column is based on experience gained in warehouse system implementation projects, it applies equally to the building of a new warehouse, to a major equipment purchase or to anything that involves complex decision-making in commercial and industrial business; committees established by political, governmental, and non-profit organizations are entirely different animals, with entirely different dynamics.

The effectiveness of a steering committee can be measured by monitoring how accurately and completely its goals and objectives are met, and by the degree to which they are met on time. In a sense, the real measure of the effectiveness of most steering committees is the degree to which they successfully balance demands for prompt completion of their work with demands for excellence. Here are some important attributes of most successful and effective steering committees:

1. A committee can only work effectively when it has clear goals and objectives and a clear schedule for attaining them. Goals, objectives, and the schedule are usually established by management -- by the people who organized the committee, selected its membership and delegated authority to it.
Goals and objectives need to be clear and specific, but often cannot be highly detailed. Generally, the higher the level of the committee members in the organization, the less detailed goals and objectives need to be. A steering committee of truck drivers needs more guidance than one composed of vice presidents.

2. Steering committees, of course, succeed or fail based on the people assigned to them. The selection of committee members, therefore, is critical.

The number of members on a steering committee will be a function of the complexity and scope of the work to be done and will also be a function of the skills and even the personalities of the people available to do the work. In general, however, committee effectiveness improves as size is increased, to a limit of about four or five members. Above that limit, further increases in committee size often result in reduced effectiveness due to difficulties in communication and scheduling.

On the other hand, the personnel assigned to a steering committee must include the entire scope of expertise required to accomplish the committee's work or, if necessary, must include people with access to that expertise. The assignment of people with the sole purpose of "representing" a part of the organization is generally counter-productive, but may be necessary. It is most important that management recognizes that committee members who serve only as "representatives," and fill no other role, usually act as an anchor in the stream and generally retard committee progress.

3. Stability of membership is important. A steering committee involved in complex decision-making cannot afford the time required to introduce new members and bring them up to speed part way through the process. Sometimes personnel replacement is made necessary by unforeseeable circumstances, but to the extent possible, it should be avoided.

4. Full-time participation of members is important. For this purpose, "full time" does not necessarily mean 40 hours per week, but instead means that all members should be part of all committee proceedings. Any person who misses meetings or takes part in only a portion of the committee's work will necessarily be uninformed in the portions that were missed. His or her contribution will thus be reduced unless some action is taken to bring the part-timer up to speed. The action required, all too often, is for the committee to start over again at the point where the part-timer dropped out, obviously wasting valuable time. It is best when all committee members attend all committee functions.

5. Strong leadership is most important to the success of a steering committee. The leader should be designated by management and should be known in advance to all committee members.
Strong leadership, in the context of a steering committee, means that the leader must have the ability to keep the committee on track with respect to both objectives and schedules. The person selected needs the authority to cut off discussion of side issues when they arise, and the credibility and personal skills required to do so without offending or alienating members. The leader must also be able to draw out members and obtain the maximum possible value from each of them. Interpersonal skills, therefore, are more important then technical ones for leaders.

Jan B. Young, CFPIM, is director of warehouse technology for Catalyst USA, Inc., a supplier of off-the-shelf warehousing and distribution systems. He is the author of Modern Inventory Operations, published by Van Nostrand Reinhold in 1990.

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