1 Story about a Steering Committee Merry-Go-Round for a Project
The purpose of this blog is to relate a story to provide some insights that might help you in creating and managing your steering committee and stakeholder participation.
The Steering Committee is covered under the project pieces of Roles, Organization, Stakeholders, and Communications under the People segment which is in the LEAD domain of the MPM model.
The Steering Committee is covered under the project pieces of Roles, Organization, Stakeholders, and Communications under the People segment which is in the LEAD domain of the MPM model
Story 1: Revolving Stakeholders
This story is about a project I was leading that was an “Incremental” project, meaning we fully implemented different business teams into production several times a month over a two-year period.
The different business teams were under the auspicious of different executive stakeholders.
Stakeholders are impacted at different times
What that meant is that we were impacting different stakeholders at different periods over the implementation.
I thought it would be a great idea to swap steering committee members out because then those executives, by participating in the steering committee, could look out for their own business teams during the period when those teams were the most impacted by the project.
There was a core group of several people on the steering committee and the rest were to be made up of the revolving members made of up those whose business teams were going through the implementations over a particular period of several months.
A Steering Meeting Merry Go Round Doesn’t Work
Then when their teams were done, those steering committee members would leave the steering committee and another set would join coincident with their business teams going through their implementations.
Well, I didn’t quite break my arm trying to pat myself on the back for that stroke of genius, but I thought it would work a lot better than it did.
Revolving attendees lack the background
Actually, it didn’t work very well at all.
Some of the executive attended, some didn’t care so didn’t show up to the meetings at all, and those that did attend, lacked the background to help in meaningful decision making.
After some time of trying to make it work, we stopped the idea, and I stopped sending invites to others to attend and we carried on with just our core group.
The core group was about a half-dozen members who were in it for the long haul and represented the interests of all other executive stakeholders.
Settle on a small core group for your steering meeting
The lesson I learned was to develop that core team and stick with it through the duration of the project because those individuals will have the background necessary throughout the term of the project to help with critical decision-making.
Summary
A steering committee is best made up of a small core group who can help make executive level decisions and is good at seeing the big picture and keeping the focus on high-level issues and decisions.
This team has to be able to attend for the whole term of the project and capable of representing the interests of other stakeholders.
Action Steps / Apply This Knowledge
- When setting up your steering meeting, make sure your stakeholders are interested in attending for the whole period and can comfortably represent the interests of other stakeholders.
- Stick with a core team of a half-dozen or so who are good at seeing the big picture and keeping the focus on high-level issues and decisions.
- Prompt engineering guidance for AI GPTs such as chatGPT: “I’m a business leader launching a project whose purpose is Y, and delivering X. What are some key considerations I need to consider when selecting the most appropriate stakeholders to help guide my project to success?”
Learn More to Do More
Business evolves through change initiatives otherwise known as projects. The key to managing these change initiatives so you have more time, and less stress is to use simple strategies and tools.
Check out the Learning Hub’s other Articles with Actionable Steps, organized with a busy leader in mind, by topic or main idea, and with some AI GPT (e.g. ChatGPT) prompt engineering suggestions under the Action steps: https://simplepmstrategies.com/learning-hub-index
LEAD – Steering Merry Go Round
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