FIELD NOTE
One hand on the wheel.
A steering committee that only approves is not steering
Sit in enough Executive Steering Committee meetings and the same scene repeats. Five capable people around the table. A packed agenda of initiatives. Every one of them gets a nod, because everyone in the room can say "yes, but" and nobody is charged with saying the final "no". The committee measures its quarter by what it approved, and the roadmap grows in every direction at once.
That is the tell. A committee that has never turned an initiative down has never actually steered. It has been applauding.
The word steering is doing real work there, and most committees walk straight past it. You steer a platform the way you steer anything: by choosing a heading, which means refusing every other heading. A tiller should have one hand on it. The moment two hands pull in different directions the boat does not go faster, it goes straight on, into whatever was already in front of it.
Now look at the five roles the committee is built around, and notice how the work actually splits. The Platform Owner knows what the platform can sustain. The Business Unit Executive knows whether it is worth doing. The Project Manager knows whether it can be delivered. The Vendor Manager knows who should build it, and on what terms. Four expert witnesses, four honest answers, and not one of them the decision. The fifth seat, the Executive Sponsor, carries the enterprise's priorities into the room, and that is the seat the direction is meant to rest on. Blur it, let the sponsor defer to the room and the room defer back, and you get the stall we’ve all seen, several senior people who could each own the call, each assuming another will, and a direction that never gets set because setting it was nobody's single job.
Four seats answer their question. One seat sets the heading.
A steering committee's real output is not the initiatives it green-lights. It is the ones it kills.
So give the tiller to one seat, out loud. Name the person who sets direction on behalf of the enterprise, usually the sponsor who already carries its priorities, and let the other four seats do what they are for, brief for that decision rather than share ownership of it. Then judge the committee by a different number. Not how many initiatives it approved last quarter, but how many it declined, and whether the platform is measurably pointed somewhere as a result. There is a reason so few organisations feel they decide well. By McKinsey's reckoning only about one in five believe they do it with any confidence, and a committee where five people can all say yes is a reliable way to join the other four.
The fix is small. It does not need a bigger committee or a longer meeting, only one seat that is allowed to say no, and a chair honest enough to count the times it did.
PRINCIPLE
Steering is choosing a heading, which means refusing the others. A committee that approves everything that reaches the table sets no direction at all. Give one seat the authority to decline, and measure the committee by what it turned down.
A steering committee that cannot say no is not a steering committee. It is a rubber stamp with better catering.
P.S. Before your next committee, read back over the last three meetings and count the noes. If there are none, the platform is not being steered. It is drifting on approval.
QUICK REFERENCE
Steering means declining. A committee that only ever approves is ratifying momentum, not setting direction.
One seat holds the tiller. Name who sets direction on behalf of the enterprise; the other four brief that decision, they do not co-own it.
Four seats inform, one decides. Platform owner, business voice, delivery and vendor each answer their question. The sponsor, carrying enterprise priorities, makes the call.
Judge the committee by its noes. What it killed last quarter tells you more than what it approved.
A split decision is a stalled one. Two owners who each defer to the other is the commonest reason a call never lands.