A short note on steering committees.

A CX steering committee is not a status meeting. It is a decision body. The most common reason it does not feel like one is that the agenda has been written by somebody who thinks otherwise.

A status agenda reads: where are we on the score, where are we on the actions, where are we on the next survey wave. A decision agenda reads, in writing, before the meeting: here is the signal, here is the proposed decision, here is what we will do if the committee agrees, and here is what we will do if it does not. The first version is a meeting about the dashboard. The second is a meeting about the business.

Three quiet things change when the second version is the one that lands in calendars.

The first: the meeting gets shorter. Status updates require everyone to speak. Decisions require only the few people whose disagreement would change the outcome. A well-written decision page allows the committee to acknowledge the proposal in five minutes if no one disagrees. The remaining hour is then spent on the thing that needed it.

A status meeting asks how are we doing. A decision meeting asks what should we do. The two are not the same room.

The second: the cast changes. A decision committee does not need a wall of stakeholders. It needs the people who can say yes, the people who can say no, and the person who will have to do the thing afterwards. Status meetings expand. Decision meetings contract. The headcount of the meeting is a quiet indicator of which one it has become.

The third: the writing changes. A status committee is fed slides, because slides forgive imprecision. A decision committee is fed a one-page document, because a one-page document does not. The discipline of writing the decision down before the meeting often produces the decision before the meeting begins, which is the whole point.

None of this is technique. It is the consequence of being clear about what the meeting is for. If the answer is "to keep people informed," then call it a status meeting and stop bringing senior people to it. If the answer is "to decide," then write it down before they arrive.

Most committees, on honest reflection, have drifted toward the first while still calling themselves the second. The drift is corrigible. The correction is mostly a question of agenda.