How to Design a Better Committee Experience

October 20, 2023

TouchPoints Learning & Innovation

The work of Committees brings value to an organization; they allow dedicated groups of people to use their passion and expertise to contribute to specific initiatives.

Designing a Better Committee Experience

While many organizations rely on Committees to get work done, they don’t always bring desired results. Why is that? Through our work with Committees, here are three observations we have made over the years:

Often, Committees are made up of volunteers or those doing committee work off the side of their desk.
Members have joined a committee because they are driven by their passion for the committee goals, and possess background or knowledge of the subject matter.
Running a Committee requires a host of skills including management, administration, budgeting—skills that volunteer participants may not necessarily possess.

If committees aren’t well-thought-out and supported, they won’t function well. If committees don’t function well, members will not have a good experience. And if members don’t have a good experience working as part of a committee—they won’t return.

Through observation of working with organizations running committees, the top issues facing committees are:

Lack of clarity on the objectives they are trying to meet
Lack of understanding on how decisions are made
Not enough support or resources to keep the committee functioning

What happens if poorly designed committees are not supported?

If Committees are left unsupported:

1. Committees struggle to determine how to work together; too much time is spent sorting out ‘who does what.’

2. Meeting time is sucked up, figuring out how to execute the plan.

3. Committee members become disenchanted with the work, quickly becoming unfulfilling and a time-waster.

4. The committee experiences turnover and more time-wasting, bringing a new team back on track.

It’s not a great situation, to be sure. It’s hard enough to find people with extra passion to spend on a side project, and if we lose them to boredom, frustration, or being unfulfilled—that’s unacceptable.

Committees: There is hope and the answer is fairly simple

We work with a client who performs a great deal of work through their participatory committees; the members are made up of people who contribute their time because they believe in the work of their committee.

Here is our challenge when tasked with helping committees function:

How can we design a better committee experience to meet the committee objectives, and those participating on committees enjoy their time and learn valuable skills?

Let’s address our findings and get back on the right path, shall we?

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We help Committees:

organize themselves so it’s clear what they are all marching towards
provide tools and templates to support the work they do so they’re not starting from scratch
offer support as needed from the early days of planning, through to carrying out the work, and debriefing progress made
help identify next steps and roadblocks so that we may clear the path to continued success

Here’s is what a well-designed committee experience can look like:

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Need help designing a better committee experience?

Does your organization involve the use of Committees? Let us help design, organize and provide support so that Committee members can LOVE their work and achieve more than they ever thought possible. Contact us today.

TouchPoints Learning & Innovation

We are an enthusiastic team of experts in learning, change and innovation. We help organizations solve business problems through facilitated creative problem-solving, team development services, outcome-driven innovation, and custom training development and delivery.

How to Design a Better Committee Experience