Following a long career in corporate America, I gained a healthy dislike for committees. In the first place, They are usually huge time wasters. This applies to all meetings, not just duly appointed committees. Second, often committees are simply a way to spread risk or colloquially, to "cover your ass." This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it takes away from accountability and that often, leads to greater risk.
I can just imagine a committee in a bank that deals with lending standards for mortgages in the years leading up to the 2008 sub-prime debacle, setting standards so low that anyone could borrow and with no collateral. Meetings and committees are often necessary evils to the conduct of business, but individual accountability is still needed.
In my life, I have learned however, of one committee that does work. This is the committee of axons and dendrites that work to process information in the brain. In terms of problem solving, which is what committees deal with, including the mortgage lending case above, where the committee is dealing with the problem of what appropriate standards to set, the committee seems to work best when resting or even sleeping. John Steinbeck, one of my favorite authors say this: "It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."
It is a paradox of sorts that sleeping a lot or taking a nap can make you a more productive person. There are some people who have to be busy all the time and many of them are very effective. But, it is also true that many people rely on the appearance of "busy-ness" to show how effective they are. They equate busy hard work with effectiveness. However, hard work and being busy are not the same thing. If you are trying to solve a particularly hard problem, it is often the "Committee of Sleep" that does the hard work. And one more benefit of the "Committee of Sleep", there still is one person who remains accountable.
GO FORTH and DO GOOD
No comments:
Post a Comment