Intrenion

Pattern: Committee sprawl

Decision-making authority is delegated to groups to dilute responsibility and slow commitment.

Situation

  1. In this condition, decision-making authority is formally assigned to committees rather than to named individuals across multiple organizational contexts.
  2. In this condition, issues that could be handled within a single role’s remit are routinely routed to group review before action is taken.
  3. In this condition, meetings are scheduled at recurring intervals and serve as the primary venue for approving or deferring actions.
  4. In this condition, decisions are frequently postponed pending additional input, alignment, or further analysis.
  5. In this condition, official records emphasize attendance, discussion, and process steps more than individual accountability for outcomes.
  6. In this condition, multiple committees may review the same proposal sequentially before any commitment is made.
  7. In this condition, no single participant is clearly identified as the final decision authority within the committee’s scope.

Assessment

  1. This occurs because assigning decisions to a group diffuses personal accountability and lowers individual political risk.
  2. This occurs because collective review is used as a safeguard against unilateral error in uncertain or high-stakes environments.
  3. This occurs because formal governance structures often equate participation and representation with legitimacy.
  4. This occurs because shared authority reduces the likelihood that any one actor can be blamed for negative outcomes.
  5. This occurs because risk-averse cultures structurally reward procedural compliance over speed of execution.
  6. This occurs because expanding stakeholder involvement increases perceived fairness while simultaneously raising coordination costs.
  7. This occurs because once established, committees create self-reinforcing procedural pathways that default new issues into group deliberation.

Consequence

  1. Without reclaiming individual decision authority, decision latency becomes structurally embedded in routine operations.
  2. Without clear ownership of outcomes, accountability remains diffused and difficult to enforce.
  3. Without reducing the number or scope of committees, governance overhead continues to expand relative to execution capacity.
  4. Without narrowing participation thresholds, coordination costs rise with the number of stakeholders per issue.
  5. Without altering incentive structures, risk avoidance remains dominant over timely commitment.

Decisions

  1. We decide to make binding decisions within our formal remit without routing them to committee because this gives us immediate execution authority instead of placing the item on the next committee agenda for collective review, and accept that we bear individual blame if the outcome is criticized.
  2. We decide to document our position and proceed after a defined review window expires because this gives us closure and timeline control instead of waiting indefinitely for explicit consensus in recurring meetings, and accept that some stakeholders may claim they were not fully aligned.
  3. We decide to withdraw from committees that do not grant us explicit decision rights because this gives us reclaimed execution time instead of continuing to attend as a non-decisive participant, and accept that we lose informal influence within those groups.

Direct formulations

  1. I will make binding decisions within my formal remit without sending them to the committee, and I will take responsibility for the outcome.
  2. I will set a fixed review deadline and proceed once it passes, without waiting for further discussion.
  3. I will stop attending committees where I have no explicit decision rights and use that time for direct execution.