Committees are Designed Because People are Incompetent

Workplace committees are created because people are either incompetent in their jobs or are not doing what they were hired for. Nobody can change my mind about this and if you start paying attention to what is being discussed during any committee meeting you will see it too.

The number of meetings I have sat through to discuss how others should do their job is astonishing. I have advised security, housekeeping, the front office, reservation, and probably even Health & Safety at some point on how to do their jobs. Not only advised but sometimes I straight up told them how to do the job.

I remember once I was sitting on a guest experience committee (we love that in the hotel industry) thinking "Can we just hire people who can do their job so we don't need this group huddle to figure out how Jack's lack of incompetence is impacting guest experience while the rest of us are pumping up the score?"

Committees are designed because people either don't know how to do their jobs or don't want to do them.

We don't need committees what we need are competent people being in charge of their departments and collaborating to address challenges that are impacting others and create new ideas. Committees are not collaborations. They are passive time wasters with mostly no outcome because they fail to address the only reason the committee had to form. The incompetence of the head of the department.

Collaboration and teamwork look like that; The head of the department is informing others about their new project, idea, and actions and discusses how that may impact other areas of the business and how it may be fine-tuned.

A committee on the other hand looks like this; Everyone is passive, the problem is presented, the person in charge has no idea how to approach the problem and committee members are asked "How do you guys think we can address this challenge?" I don't know Dave, why doesn't the head of the department who is in charge come up with a solution? Why are we asking security about how to address parking challenges?

As Steve Jobs said; teamwork and collaboration is trusting others to come through with their part of the job without watching them all the time. By the way, Apple has zero committees. Why?

They hire the right people.

You don't want managers and leaders who need a committee, a whole team behind them to get their job done. You want managers and leaders who identify challenges and opportunities, work out how they can be addressed and implemented and later inform and collaborate with others to make things happen.