Decisions by committee inevitably lead to awkward conversations around authority, tentative suggestions instead of assertive actions, and absolute inability to actually get anything done. Collaboration needs to be guided for it to work, says Matt Casey
As I’m sure was true of most people, the laughing I did while watching the Handforth Parish Council Zoom call was underpinned by a horrible sense of familiarity.
We’ve all been on a version of that call.
The volume might have been turned up to 11 this time, but we’d all heard the song before.
I think everything that transpired in that meeting can be explained by a single behaviour – or perhaps I should say expectation – that has become ubiquitous in the working world: everyone thinks they should have a say in everything.
There is an almost pathological fear of individual responsibility that has taken hold of work, but at the same time we want everyone to be heard on every single subject. We don’t have individual authority or responsibility for anything, but we are pulled into a collective that has responsibility for absolutely everything.
This leads to stupid conversations like the Handforth Parish Council had, where everyone was angry with everyone else, and nobody knew who was in charge of anything. Everyone knew they could be in trouble if things went wrong, but nobody had the authority to make things go the way they thought was right.
I think if I was asked to help a dysfunctional company, but was told that I could only make one change, the one I would make would be to abolish decision by committee. There is absolutely no evidence that decisions made by committee are better. 100 people probably won’t make a better decision than 1 person, in fact they will almost certainly make a worse one, and it will take them a lot longer to get there.
The Parish council video showed a fantastic example of what happens when you try to make decisions by committee – the committee usually just decides to form a subcommittee. This happens because faced with the chaos of everyone trying to have an input, and everyone insisting on dying on every hill, they have no choice but to break off and form a smaller group where the shouting won’t be so deafening. The behaviour will be identical in that group, but there will be fewer people, so there’s a chance they might actually be able to reach a conclusion. Once again, it’s still the same song, the volume is just quieter.
Decisions by committee inevitably lead to the kinds of situations we saw on that call. The awkward conversations around authority, the tentative suggestions instead of assertive actions, and the absolute inability to actually get anything done. The ridiculous thing about it all is that I’m sure if these people had taken a step back, they would have realised they didn’t even care about the things they were arguing about. But they got involved because people like to feel involved and to have influence.
When decisions are made by committee, this gives people none of that sense – so they have to take it by force. Everyone is thrown together to make a decision as a group, so the only way they can feel that they have an impact is to force themselves into each issue. This is especially true when the group themselves will be accountable for every decision as a whole. Each person will almost lose sight of whether they have anything valuable to add to an issue, or if they even care or not, they’ll just get involved because they feel like they’re supposed to be involved, and they don’t want a decision that they will in some small part be responsible for to be made without them being heard.
I strongly believe that every single decision made within a company should be made by a single person, not a group. Each decision should have an owner, and that person should have full authority to make that decision. If they want to include other people in the process that should be entirely up to them (although I would argue that someone who doesn’t talk to anyone else before making a decision is someone who shouldn’t have authority to make them) and for every decision, there should be a single person responsible for making it who has the authority to make it however they see fit.
When you work this way, you will see problems like those we witnessed on the Handforth Parish Council Meeting stop occurring. Instead of everyone feeling like they are partly responsible for every decision that gets made, they know that they are fully responsible for just one or two decisions, and their input in all the other ones is entirely optional. They will still involve each other. They will still ask for advice and gather other opinions, but by giving people clear areas of responsibility you take away their urge to die on every single hill. They have a sense of influence already, so they don’t need to get involved in every other area unnecessarily.
I no longer go into a meeting without knowing which decisions need to be made in that meeting, and who the person responsible for each of those decisions is. If those things aren’t clear, the meeting isn’t happening. Whoever the decision maker is has full authority over the conversation relating to that decision. If they’re sensible they will listen to other viewpoints, but they can decide when it’s time to stop talking, and nobody has to agree with their decision. Working this way lets a committee actually function effectively, without the posturing.
If the Parish Council call showed us anything, it’s that you can’t just chuck a group of people together and expect collaboration to magically happen. Humans are actually not a very cooperative bunch.
There is a quote I have always loved from Robert Ardrey which opens: ‘But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels.’
Humans have learned to cooperate, but it doesn’t actually come very naturally to us. When you throw us together and we don’t have natural leadership, or clearly defined areas of responsibility, what usually happens is what happened on that call. The ape in us comes out, and pretty soon we’re throwing faeces, metaphorically speaking.
Hopefully.
A strong leader will stop this kind of behaviour in its tracks, but when that strong leader isn’t there, we can still prevent it if we provide clear decision making authority, and we make sure that everyone still feels a sense of ownership and responsibility. One of the great things about dividing decision making up this way is that it creates a kind of mutually assured destruction, where each person will be less likely to be obstructive and difficult when it comes to the decisions other people have to make. If you know you will need input from people when it comes to making a decision yourself, you’re not going to make their lives unnecessarily difficult when they’re making decisions of their own.
There is often a fear that providing single points of authority in this way diminishes collaboration, but it actually does the opposite. It improves it, because collaboration needs to be guided for it to work, especially in the age when it’s happening over Zoom.
If you found the Handforth Parish Council call funny because it was familiar to you, I think that’s a very clear sign that something has to change.
Matt Casey is a management expert, the co-founder of DoThings.io and author of The Management Delusion: What If We’re Doing it All Wrong out now
