Organisation / The Committee

Deciding And Being Informed Are Not The Same Thing

Many committees believe they have made decisions they have only heard about.

Read a set of minutes from a struggling organisation and a pattern appears. Item after item is recorded in the language of information. The committee noted the position. The committee discussed the proposal. The committee was updated on progress. What is often missing is the moment where the committee decided anything: chose between options, accepted a defined risk, authorised a specific person to do a specific thing within specific limits. The meeting felt substantial because it was full of content. It produced almost nothing that anyone could act on, or be held to, afterwards.

This matters most when something goes wrong. If the group cannot show what was decided, by whom and on what basis, then every past action becomes contestable and every participant is exposed to a version of events reconstructed after the fact. It also matters in ordinary times, because staff and volunteers cannot act confidently when the boundary of their authority is unwritten. A capable coordinator who does not know what they may approve without asking will either stop and ask about everything, which is slow and demoralising, or proceed and hope, which is worse.

The fix is uncomfortable only for the first few meetings. Every item is labelled before discussion begins as a decision, a discussion or a note. Decision items name the options and the recommendation. The minute for a decision records what was resolved, who is responsible and by when, not the flow of the conversation. Alongside this sits a plain list of what the committee has delegated and to whom, reviewed occasionally so it reflects reality rather than the arrangement of several years ago. None of this makes meetings longer. It usually makes them shorter, because a group that knows what it is deciding stops circling.