/GLOSSARY

Steering committee

A steering committee, specifically an Executive Steering Committee (ESC), is the governance tier that owns platform decisions, not platform updates. It is the pit crew, not the grandstand: a small, role-defined group with the authority to resolve cross-functional disputes, approve scope changes, and unblock strategic trade-offs.

WHY IT MATTERS

Most steering committees fail because they are designed as status meetings. The agenda follows a project-management template (RAG status, timeline update, risk register) and the executives in the room listen politely, ask a few questions, and leave without making a single decision. The meeting consumed an hour of senior leadership time and produced nothing the programme could not have sent in an email.

A functioning ESC has five roles: the decision-maker (who owns the final call), the challenge function (who stress-tests every proposal), the business-value guardian (who validates against strategic objectives), the technical authority (who confirms feasibility and risk), and the programme sponsor (who owns the overall mandate). Each role has a defined purpose, and crucially, the meeting is structured to produce decisions, not receive presentations.

COMMON MISTAKES

Staffing the committee with too many members, which diffuses accountability and turns decisions into consensus-seeking exercises. Five to seven members is the upper bound for a functioning decision-making body.
Using the steering committee as a status-reporting forum rather than a decision-making body. The committee should arrive having read the status report, not hear it presented for the first time.
Failing to define escalation triggers, so issues only reach the ESC when they have already become crises, rather than when early intervention could have prevented them.

Steering committee

The frameworks your steering committee will actually use.