By Ritvars Mētra, Founder of ReadinessCompassThe steering committee meets monthly for ninety minutes. Roughly seventy of those minutes are spent presenting status: what has been completed, what is on track, what is amber and why.
In the remaining twenty, nothing is decided that could not have been decided by the programme manager. The committee has spent its meeting being informed, which is a use of nine senior people that nobody would defend if it were described that way.
Status reporting crowds out risk
The clearest published statement of this failure comes from the UK National Audit Office. Reviewing Crossrail in 2019, the auditors observed that the progress reports given to the board and sponsors emphasised what had been achieved and how much of the programme had been completed — and that they did not adequately consider the level of risk to successful delivery that remained. The NAO returned to it in Lessons learned: Resetting major programmes.
Completion is cumulative, easy to evidence and flattering. Remaining risk is contestable and unflattering, and can rise the week before a milestone. A committee that receives the first and not the second is structurally unable to govern, however senior its members.
What only this group can decide
The test for whether something belongs on the agenda is simple: could anyone else in the organisation decide this? If yes, it is a report, not a decision.
| Belongs to the committee | Does not |
|---|---|
| Trade-offs between scope, date and quality | Approving documents |
| Releasing people from business roles into the programme | Reviewing task-level progress |
| Resolving conflicts between functions that will not resolve themselves | Discussing issues that already have an owner and a plan |
| Setting and holding the readiness criteria | Reviewing the readiness dashboard |
| Deciding to delay, descope or stop | Being told the programme is on track |
| Whether the organisation can absorb this alongside everything else | Anything the programme manager can already do |
The second and last rows are the ones most often missing, and they are the two things a committee is uniquely able to do. Only this group can take a named person out of a business role and put them on the programme, and only this group can see the whole portfolio landing on the same people.
Own the criteria, delegate the call
There is a real tension in gate decisions: the committee has the authority but not the operational visibility, while the people with visibility are too close to be trusted with the decision.
The Bank of England’s Real-Time Gross Settlement renewal offers a resolution worth copying. In its December 2025 report, the NAO describes how the Renewal Executive Board gave overall approval for go-live using set readiness criteria, then delegated the final decision to the programme’s senior owner and technical director, so that it was made by those with detailed knowledge of readiness.
The board owned the standard; the people closest to the evidence applied it. That split removes the committee’s ability to renegotiate its own criteria at the moment of decision, which is the most common way a gate becomes a formality — and it is why criteria agreed months in advance are worth more than criteria agreed in the meeting.
The bias the committee has to counteract
Committees are structurally inclined to continue. Information systems research has studied this for decades as escalation of commitment; Mark Keil’s Pulling the Plug in MIS Quarterly sets out why software projects in particular resist cancellation — sunk costs, the self-justification of the people who approved the plan, and the asymmetry that abandonment is a visible attributable decision while continuation is not.
The NAO found the same dynamic in government: workshop participants said resets were viewed negatively, so bodies kept trying to resolve unresolvable issues rather than admit one was needed. Across fourteen surveyed programmes there were twenty-four resets, and respondents most often identified product or output failure — not a checkpoint — as what finally triggered the decision.
Two habits counteract this, and both are cheap. Put the cost of delay on every gate paper, so proceeding is a choice between two priced options rather than the only option presented. And ask the NAO’s own question at intervals: when did you last challenge the programme as to whether everything is going to plan?
A better agenda
- Decisions required today — listed first, with options and a recommendation. If there are none, consider cancelling the meeting.
- Remaining risk, stated as consequence rather than count, and only the items that need this group.
- Readiness against pre-agreed criteria, including which are not met.
- What the programme needs from members personally — a name, a decision, a conversation held.
- Status, circulated in advance and not presented.
Moving status to pre-reading is the single change that transforms these meetings, and it is resisted every time because presenting progress is comfortable and asking for a decision is not.
More on governance and readiness evidence in the Change Readiness Hub, or read what a go/no-go decision actually requires.