Put An End To Committees!

By: Phil Grisolia
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:36:28
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Committees have been the bane of management almost from the beginning of time. Like a number of other things in our world, you can’t live with ‘em, and you can’t live without ‘em, right?. Not so fast, friend. There may actually be a way to rid the business world of committees, once and for all.

You say your company has a problem? Time to form a committee to deal with it, to recommend a solution! Got another problem? Another committee’s got to be the way to go. Do that often enough, and your committees become a problem of their own. Typically, committees tie up too many resources for too long while accomplishing too little.

I’m not quite sure what it is about committees that prevents them from being constructive or productive, but they’re often neither. Rarely have been. Seldom will be. Committees, after all, are where the difficult is sent to be buried, studied to death, or to simply forgotten.

I’ve got a suspicion the problem with committees is that they’re called “committees.” I hope I haven’t lost you here. Stay with me just a moment longer, please. Research – totally unscientific, mind you – seems to indicate that committees have been so useless for so long that no one any longer expects them to accomplish anything.

What to do? Let me share with you a suggestion I made to one of my clients. Get rid of them! All committees. And never create another committee again.

No, that won’t make the problems of your business go away. Sorry ‘bout that. But the second half of the suggestion certainly might.

You say your company has a problem? Form a Task Force to deal with. Yes, a “Task Force.” Even the name implies action. Know something? Just that one simple change – a change in name – made a world of difference. When questioned, the people who had been named to Task Forces indicated that they felt a “responsibility” – their word, not mine – to come up with solutions to the problems they were given.

I must admit, however, that the first attempt at ridding this client of useless committees didn’t work nearly as well. Probably because the first name change I recommended to replace committees was “Study Groups.” And guess what? Those members felt an obligation to “study” the problems they were given, but not necessarily to develop solutions for them.

Proving once again that a rose by any other name might smell the same, but certainly committees do not.

© 2006, Philip A. Grisolia, CBC

Phil Grisolia is first and foremost a “wordsmith.” He’s also an award-winning copywriter, an author, business coach, and educator. To learn more about Phil and the “wordsmithing” he provides for his clients, drop in on him anytime at http://PhilGrisolia.com . While there, be sure to sign up for a free subscription to his best-in-class newsletter – Making Sense of Marketing™.

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