What good are committees?

Good for keeping one person from pursuing a narrow vision. It’s always nice to have multiple people, both in terms of generating more ideas and in terms of keeping people from expending energy on crazy ideas that will never fly. But yes, bad for efficient progress. There are good ways to structure group endeavors though…

They’re good for brainstorming, too.
They suck at just about everything else, though. Most of my work rules were established by a committee of people who’ve never done the job. We gots to ignore them in places if we’re to get any work done.

A committee can be a help or a hindrance depending on how it is structured and who it contains.

Committees are as good as the people comprising them – therefore, they can be sinfully stagnating or wonderfully progressive and move the organization forward.

It is the same principle that made the Founders want to keep the individual states as sovereign. The principle is often articulated in the axiom “Two heads are better than one”. It keeps a really bad idea from spreading quickly through an organization and thus destroying it. The down side is that it also keeps a good idea from quick fruition. But you can’t have everything, and at least you are not destroyed while you wait for the good idea to obtain.

Start calling them “Teams” instead of committees. That will help you see their value and be less pissy about needing them.

They are good for (a) broadening the vision, (b) multiplying the input, (c) sharing the responsibility, and (d) spreading the blame. However, they are not necessarily good for accomplishing a task.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir, I’m sorry to disagree, but I’ve been on a hell of a lot of teams of great, talented, committed people that accomplished little or nothing because a crew of peers with no one truly in charge was the wrong approach for the job. Listen to The Three Tenors if you want to hear what happens when people who are all stars in their own right are shackled together in a setting where no one can dominate, or worse, where someone does who shouldn’t and the other stars don’t agree with that person’s approach or solutions.

Some things are best done by consensus and some work best when there is a single, undiluted concept and a single authority.

Unfortunately the notion of democratic process has often been carried too far in corporate environments. Not everything ought to be done by majority rule. Sometimes you just need someone to make consistent decisions that are not derailed by some neurotic whiner or managerial ass-kisser. But you can get labeled “not a team player” if you say that out loud. And in corporate America you might just as well step into an empty elevator shaft if you get stuck with that label.

Committees were invented by doughnut manufacturers as a way to move product.

But seriously, for a lot of complicated organizations where no one person knows all of the details of a product or process, it helps to have experts collaborate (sometimes, in as light a way as possible) to make sure that each discipline has its needs met.

For example, in my company’s product line we need to be concerned with the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code as well as its equivalent in other countries, export and import restrictions in terms of what we can send from the US and what other countries will accept, and from where, transport requirements in the source and destination country as well as ocean shipping and insurance, bonded warehouse and customs clearance requirements, legal tax avoidance, finance and letters of credit, scheduling, sourcing products worldwide in accordance with complicated contract requirements, short and long term storage requirements, erection of the equipment after delivery and site storage, startup and commissioning and warranty coverage per the contract. And we need to do that on every one of several thousand components making up the entire delivered product over a four or five-year engineering, procurement, delivery and erection span.

@Jeruba A good committee wouldn’t be comprised of ‘all stars’ and would have someone who is in charge.

Committees that consist of knowledgeable people benefit from the combined resources and information of all participants. Committees consisting of any other random group of people can be cumbersome and non-productive.

They’re also one way that you can pass on information and have people ask questions and learn how the decision or product or whatever was made, so when they do their work, they can better understand the mission.

Of course, committees are good for group think, too. When you want everyone to think the same way, throw them into a committee with no particular mission. Or better yet, a mission they know nothing about. Sometimes you get good ideas from people who don’t know what they don’t know and don’t know that that can’t be done. Sometimes it’s dreck.

But what do I know. I don’t believe I’ve ever served on any kind of committee in my life.