Nobody prepares you for this.
One day you’re running your part of the business. The next, someone puts you on a steering committee for a major project. Maybe a transformation. Maybe a system replacement. Maybe something that sounds important but you’re not entirely sure what it does yet.
You show up to the first meeting. There are papers. There’s a status report with traffic lights. Someone talks for 20 minutes about milestones and dependencies. You nod. You leave. You’re not sure what just happened, or what you were supposed to do about it.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And it’s not your fault.
I went through every piece of academic research I could find on how steering committees actually work. Not the theory. The empirical stuff. Researchers who went into organisations, sat with real committees, and studied what happened.
In 16 years, fewer than 10 studies have been done. For something every major project depends on, we barely understand how it works.
But the research that does exist tells a consistent story. And it lines up with what I’ve seen across 25 years of transformation work.
Here are nine things I wish someone had told me the first time I sat on one of these things.
1. Understand what’s expected of you, and what the delivery team needs from you
Before your first meeting, someone should walk you through the Terms of Reference and explain what they need from you specifically. When I was a program manager, I did this with every committee member before the first meeting. If nobody’s done that for you, ask for it.
The Terms of Reference defines the committee: what authority it has, what decisions it can make, who the members are, and how it relates to other governance bodies. If it doesn’t exist, that’s your first red flag. If it’s a copy-paste of a generic template used for every project in the organisation, that’s your second.
Get clear on two things. What authority does this committee have? Does it decide, or does it advise? If someone outside the room can overrule it, you don’t have a steering committee. You have a talking shop.
And why are you specifically on it? You represent a specific interest: the people funding the project, the people who’ll use what it delivers, the people building it, the people who’ll operate it afterwards, or an independent quality assurance perspective. Know which one you are.
But there’s a second question that’s just as important and almost always missed.
What does the delivery team need from you?
If you lead a large operational team, the project will probably need input from your people. Testing. Subject matter expertise. Time. That dependency should be on the table from day one. Not the specifics, because it’s probably too early. But the understanding: the delivery team will need support from your area, and you’re committed to making that happen.
If the delivery team hasn’t asked you for anything yet, ask them directly. They might not be sure yet. That’s fine. Putting the question on the table early signals something important: you’re there to help the project succeed, not just to sit in judgement of it.
Done well, this one conversation at the beginning can be one of the most powerful things a steering committee member does.
McGrath & Whitty (2019) found six fundamental confusions about what steering committees are, including confusion between deciding and advising. Stoppels et al. (2025) found that when roles are clear, decision-making improves and relationship conflict reduces. Karlsen (2021) identified the committee’s support role as one of the most important trust-building mechanisms. A proper Terms of Reference would resolve most of these confusions before the committee ever meets.
2. Prepare before the meeting
Your job in the meeting is to make decisions and provide direction. You can’t do that if you’re seeing the material for the first time when it’s projected on the wall.
Read the pre-read materials. All of them. If something doesn’t make sense, a technical term, a cost figure, a risk rating, reach out to the project manager or the relevant team member before the meeting. Don’t wait until you’re in the room to discover you don’t understand something. That wastes everyone’s time and forces the meeting into briefing mode when it should be in decision mode.
If you have questions that will shape discussion, let the PM know in advance. That gives them time to prepare a proper answer rather than being put on the spot.
If you genuinely haven’t had time to read the materials, say so at the start. That’s more honest, and more useful, than sitting silently while decisions are made on information you haven’t reviewed.
Stoppels et al. (2023) found that competences needed for steering committee membership are “generally taken for granted, but not always present.” The QUT empirical study found that project board competency ranked 4.6 out of 5 as a critical factor in project success, and that organisational shortcomings, not methodology, were the primary constraint. Preparation is where competence starts.
3. Understand the end goal and use it as your filter
Go back to the business case. Be clear in your own mind: what is the outcome this project is supposed to deliver? Not the outputs, not the system or the process, but the business outcome. What changes for the organisation when this project succeeds?
Once you’re clear on that, use it as your filter for everything. Every status update, every risk, every change request, every decision. Ask yourself: how does this get us to that outcome? If you can’t see the connection, ask the question. If the project team can’t articulate the connection, that’s a problem worth surfacing.
The business case is the reason this project exists. If it’s no longer valid, the project shouldn’t be either, regardless of how much has already been spent.
Loch, Mähring & Sommer (2017) found that effective committees maintain oversight even with limited time by developing a “focused understanding of the key logic and drivers of the project.” You don’t need to understand the wiring. You need to understand the logic.
4. Steer forward, don’t audit the past
This is the single biggest shift most new members need to make.
Your instinct will be to focus on what’s already happened. Review milestones. Check whether last month’s actions were completed. Interrogate why something was late or over budget.
That’s auditing. That’s not steering.
Steering means looking forward. What’s coming that could derail us? What decisions need to be made? What risks are emerging? What dependencies might not hold? What does the delivery team need from us to keep moving?
The PM can report on what happened last month without a room full of senior executives. Your value is in the terrain the project hasn’t reached yet, where your organisational knowledge and relationships can actually change outcomes.
Watch out for fixating on what’s easy to measure. Spend is easy to quantify, so committees spend disproportionate time on it. “We’re 5% over budget on Phase 2” feels concrete and discussable. But if the project is delivering the wrong outcome, being on budget is meaningless.
And learn to read RAG status properly.
One of the most common and most wasteful steering committee behaviours is debating the label. “Is this really green? Feels more like amber to me.” I’ve watched 40 minutes of a senior executive meeting disappear into this.
Here’s what the colours actually mean.
Green: On track. The project is operating within the tolerances agreed for this project. No committee action needed on this item.
Amber: There is a problem, but there is a plan to address it, or the problem is believed to be manageable. The committee should understand the plan and satisfy itself the plan is credible.
Red: Crisis. The project needs the committee’s immediate attention and active intervention.
Technical Red: The project will not deliver within the agreed tolerances. A formal change is needed: more budget, more time, or a change to scope. This is a decision only the committee can make.
The question is never “what colour is this?” The question is always “what do we need to do about it?” And more importantly: “what’s coming next that we should be preparing for?”
Drake & Bekker (2023) found that committees’ top three actual activities were all backward-looking: validating results, reviewing performance, custodian of governance. The literature says their top three should be forward-looking: identifying priorities, managing risks, steering budget, schedule, and quality. Effective committees close that gap.
5. Create an environment where the delivery team can tell you the truth
Here’s a scene you might recognise.
You’re sitting in the steering committee. Everything’s green. No problems. Everyone says it’s fine. Then you walk down the corridor and people are telling you about this problem, that problem, the other problem.
And you think: why is nobody telling me the truth?
The answer is usually simple. You’re the boss. There is always pressure to tell you what you want to hear rather than what you need to hear. Your job is to make it safe for them to bring you the truth.
If you disagree with the PM’s recommendation, try to resolve it before the meeting. Don’t ambush them in the room. Don’t use the committee meeting to demonstrate your authority or technical knowledge at the PM’s expense. Challenge the issue, not the person.
That doesn’t mean you rubber-stamp everything. The steering committee makes the decisions, not the PM. Your job is to interrogate, probe, and challenge, but in a way that doesn’t make the delivery team afraid to bring you bad news next time.
When the PM brings you bad news early, that’s a sign the governance is working. If they only bring you good news, be worried.
When the committee decides to back a difficult recommendation, one that stakeholders might not like, do it visibly. That builds the trust that makes honest reporting possible next time.
This can be one of the most powerful success factors a steering committee creates. When the delivery team knows you have their back, they stop spending energy protecting themselves and start spending it on delivering the project.
One PM put it to me like this: “I’m so much more productive now that I can use both hands. I don’t have to keep one behind me covering my arse.”
Karlsen (2021) found that the committee’s willingness to support difficult decisions was one of the most important trust-building mechanisms. Müller’s research (2009-2017) consistently finds that trust-based governance outperforms control-based governance in complex, uncertain environments. You need both formal mechanisms and genuine trust. Not one instead of the other.
6. Gather your own intelligence
Don’t rely solely on what’s presented to you in the meeting.
This doesn’t mean going around the project manager or undermining the reporting process. It means using your position in the organisation to stay informed. Walk the floor. Talk to the people who will use what the project is building. Talk to the people doing the work. Ask the PM, outside the formal meeting, what’s keeping them up at night, not just what’s in the highlight report.
The formal reporting process tells you what the project team thinks you need to know. Your own intelligence tells you what’s actually happening. The gap between the two is where risks hide.
Loch et al. (2017) identified intelligence gathering as one of five critical themes of steering committee oversight and noted it had never been discussed in prior research. They found it was one of the areas where committees most often failed and where they could add the most value.
7. Make decisions at the speed the project needs, and help the project help you
Projects stall when steering committees defer decisions. Every meeting where a decision is delayed is a period where the project team either waits (wasting time and money) or presses ahead on assumptions (creating risk).
If a decision is needed, make it. If you can’t make it in this meeting, be specific. “We’ll revisit this next month” is not a decision timeline. “I need X from the project team by Friday, and I’ll confirm the decision by the following Tuesday” is.
Be clear about what you need to make the decision. Don’t make the delivery team guess. If you need a cost-benefit analysis, say so. If you need the options narrowed from five to two, say so.
But this works both ways.
A good delivery team should be telling you well in advance that a decision is coming, what it’s about, what the options are, and what information you’ll need to decide. If the first time you hear about a decision is when it lands on the agenda, the project team hasn’t prepared you properly. If that keeps happening, raise it.
Help the project help you. Tell them how you like to receive information, how much lead time you need, and what a good decision paper looks like. When I was a program manager, I’d start preparing the committee for major decisions weeks in advance. The meeting should be the last step, not the first.
Mosavi (2014) found that committees operate in three distinct modes: communication, negotiation, and decision-making. Not every meeting needs a decision. But when one is needed, the committee must deliver. McGrath & Whitty (2019) found that confusion between deciding and advising is one of the six root dysfunctions of steering committees.
8. Speak up. Constructive challenge is your job.
If something doesn’t add up, say so. If a risk is being underplayed, name it. If a change request doesn’t connect to the business outcome, question it. If the timeline looks unrealistic, challenge it.
Silence in a steering committee is not support. It’s negligence. You were put on this committee for your perspective and your judgement. If you don’t use them, you’re taking up a seat someone else could fill.
But challenge constructively. “I don’t see how this gets us to the outcome we agreed” is useful. “This is wrong” without explanation is not. Ask questions that open up thinking rather than shut it down.
When things go wrong, a missed milestone, a budget overrun, a sponsor asking hard questions, resist the urge to narrow the conversation. That’s when you most need diverse perspectives, not less.
Staw, Sandelands & Dutton (1981) found that under threat, groups narrow their information processing and tighten control, exactly the wrong response when you need creative problem-solving. Stoppels et al. (2025) found that when trust and shared goals are present, constructive challenge actually prevents relationship conflict rather than causing it.
9. Do your job between meetings
The committee meeting is the checkpoint, not the workplace.
If you took an action, do it before the next meeting. Nothing erodes a delivery team’s confidence faster than a committee that talks big in the room and delivers nothing outside it.
Stay engaged between meetings. If the PM reaches out with an issue that can’t wait, respond. If something changes in your part of the organisation that affects the project, a restructure, a budget cut, a competing initiative, let the PM know proactively rather than waiting for the next scheduled meeting.
Your commitment isn’t two hours a month in a meeting room. It’s a standing obligation to use your position, your relationships, and your authority to help this project succeed.
Karlsen (2021) identified commitment and continuity as two of the six features that build trust. PMI’s Pulse of the Profession data (2014-2021) consistently shows that active executive sponsorship is the top driver of project success. “Active” means engaged between touchpoints, not just present in meetings. Only 1 in 4 organisations measures whether their committees are effective. Nobody is checking whether you’re doing this well. Hold yourself to account.
Why this matters
Every project that fails has a steering committee that let it happen.
Not through malice. Not through incompetence. Through confusion about what the role actually requires, and nobody bothering to explain it.
That’s fixable. These nine things aren’t complicated. But they’re not obvious either, because nobody teaches them and almost nobody researches them.
The delivery team doesn’t just report to you. They depend on you.
This guide draws on verified peer-reviewed research including McGrath & Whitty (2019), Stoppels et al. (2023, 2025), Loch, Mähring & Sommer (2017), Karlsen (2021), Drake & Bekker (2023), Mosavi (2014), Lechler & Cohen (2009), and PMI Pulse of the Profession data. A full evidence briefing with detailed source analysis is available on request.
Dave is the founder of Rainman Advisory, a Brisbane-based transformation consultancy specialising in transformation rescue. He has 25 years of experience delivering and governing transformation programs across financial services, government, and infrastructure in Australia, the UK, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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