A meeting without governance is a dangerous thing. Someone might arrive with the answer, obtain agreement, and leave early. The room would then sit empty despite having been booked for an hour. This is how organizations lose control of their overhead.
At SoftBoulders, we recommend a steering committee for any meeting whose participants can still remember why it was scheduled. Our Sedimentary Governance Model adds protective layers between a problem and the person who could solve it. With sufficient layering, even an urgent decision can become a permanent feature of the landscape.
Give the meeting a parent.
A team may believe it has authority to decide where to put a printer. This is precisely when executive oversight is needed. Form a Printer Location Steering Committee, appoint a sponsor who is difficult to schedule, and ask the team to prepare three options. One option should be obviously unacceptable so the preferred option appears to have survived rigorous competition.
Do not invite the person who moves printers. They will reduce the discussion to floor space and available outlets, overlooking the organizational implications of who sits nearest the paper tray.
Separate accountability from permission.
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Executive sponsor | Approves the direction once the direction has been approved. |
| Steering committee | Returns recommendations for further alignment. |
| Working group | Prepares the recommendations that will be returned. |
| Action owner | Explains why nothing moved while everyone else governed. |
This arrangement ensures that the person responsible for delivery cannot authorize it, while the people authorized to approve it have no immediate reason to do so. The structure is stable because every delay confirms the need for more structure.
Maintain a healthy parking lot.
Any question that threatens to resolve the subject should be moved to the parking lot. A good parking lot resembles a rural equipment yard: full of things somebody intends to get running eventually. Assign each item an owner, a target date, and a more distant target date to reveal at the next meeting.
Measure the governance, not the printer.
Track attendance, document revisions, and the number of stakeholders consulted. These figures can improve indefinitely without anyone lifting anything heavy. If somebody asks whether the printer has moved, acknowledge the excellent question and add it to the next agenda.
Eventually the lease will expire and the entire office will relocate. Declare the printer workstream successfully absorbed into a broader transformation. Archive the decision log. Keep the committee. It has valuable institutional knowledge and nowhere else to be on Thursdays.
