This post started after reading this blurb questioning the need for committees. And I have to say I agree.
My office excels at bringing together committees, or working groups, or what-have-you. In practice, though, the most effective use of everyone's time that I've seen has been in bringing together the two or three people who will actually do the work for the project and having them keep up with each other.
In a lot of cases, this could be done online. Twitter could be used for up-to-the-minute updates. Or, of course, you could use a more normal project management package. A few of us used Backpack pretty extensively for awhile. The subject experts should only be pulled in as consultants to make a good project run.
But the point of committees in our office (often), unfortunately, and I see the need for it, is generally for buy-in. To keep people aware of how the project is coming.
And I really feel it's a waste sometimes. But there's a huge culture change that would need to take place to make it all work without them.
Has anyone else actually been in a place that has managed that change? Any tips you can share?
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2 comments:
The last part of what you said made the most sense to me, because I understood -- even as I wrote that post -- that you need to have buy-in in order to get anywhere in institutional environments.
I just tend to throw ideas to see how crazy I am. :)
And those ideas do help, really they do. So thanks for tossing them out there: it helps the rest of us think about process too. :)
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