The successful launch of a working group

The problem was known. Its cause had been analysed. A workable solution was already on the table. Under normal circumstances, somebody might have made a decision. Fortunately, the organisation had procedures to protect itself from such haste.

“Before we rush into action,” one manager suggested, “we should establish a cross-functional working group.” Heads nodded around the room. Nobody wanted to appear careless, especially in the presence of a problem that might eventually become important.

One week later, the working group held its inaugural meeting. The chair was appointed, the membership confirmed and a recurring meeting series created. Participants discussed how future minutes should be distributed. The original problem was deferred because the agenda was full.

After six meetings, the group proudly reported its first major achievement: a decision should now be prepared without unnecessary delay. Senior management welcomed the progress. At last, something was moving—although nobody could say precisely what.

When coordination becomes the product

Working groups are not inherently wasteful. In complex industrial projects, no single discipline has all the information. Engineering understands technical constraints; purchasing knows supplier realities; manufacturing sees capacity limits; sales understands commitments to the customer. Bringing these perspectives together can prevent costly mistakes.

The difficulty begins when coordination stops being a means and becomes an end. A meeting creates a follow-up meeting. The follow-up identifies a need for a steering committee. The steering committee requests a decision paper. The decision paper requires alignment with stakeholders who were not invited to the first meeting. By the time the process is complete, the market, the customer or the production schedule may have made the decision on the company’s behalf.

This is an expensive form of organisational theatre. Everyone has a role, everyone has a calendar invitation and everyone can demonstrate activity. Yet activity is not the same as progress. A neatly documented postponement is still a postponement.

The simplest diagnostic question is often the most uncomfortable: what became possible after this meeting that was not possible before it? If the answer is merely “we now have another meeting,” the process deserves examination.

Why intelligent people postpone decisions

It would be easy—and unfair—to blame this behaviour on incompetent managers. In my experience, many capable professionals operate inside structures that reward caution more visibly than responsible action. A wrong decision has an identifiable author. A delayed decision can be attributed to complexity, missing alignment or the need for further analysis.

Unclear authority compounds the problem. Participants may be accountable for delivering an outcome without having the mandate to choose between alternatives. Others may possess authority but lack the relevant information. A working group then becomes a convenient bridge between responsibility and decision rights—except that the bridge never quite reaches the other side.

There is also a social dimension. Challenging a proposed meeting can sound uncooperative. Asking who will decide can sound confrontational. Requesting a clear deadline can sound impatient. Consequently, organisations sometimes confuse politeness with effectiveness.

None of this means that uncertainty should be ignored. Decisions involving safety, legal obligations or irreversible investments require proportionate scrutiny. But the right response to uncertainty is to identify what must be known, who can provide it and when a decision can responsibly be made—not to create a permanent home for the uncertainty.

Not deciding is also a decision. It simply tends to arrive without a signature.

The hidden economics of another meeting

The visible cost of a meeting is straightforward: the number of participants multiplied by the time spent. The more important costs are often invisible. While a project team discusses an issue, a supplier quotation expires, a design change becomes more expensive, a customer commitment remains unresolved or an installation window closes.

In industrial project business, timing changes the economics of an otherwise sound technical decision. A correction made before a quotation is submitted may be relatively inexpensive. The same correction during procurement can require renegotiation. During manufacturing it may cause rework. During installation it can become a schedule problem. After commissioning, it may turn into a warranty dispute.

This is why I do not measure a meeting primarily by how efficiently it follows its agenda. I ask whether it prevents downstream costs, enables a decision or removes a real obstacle. A 30-minute meeting with no consequence can be more expensive than a carefully prepared two-hour discussion that avoids weeks of uncertainty.

Of course, organisations need documentation and traceability. The objective is not to eliminate governance but to make governance useful. A decision record should clarify what was decided, on what basis, by whom, and what happens next. It should not merely prove that people attended.

The Two-Hour Rule: preparation before participation

During more than three decades in international machinery and plant engineering, I repeatedly observed that the length of a discussion says little about the difficulty of the underlying problem. What matters is the quality of preparation and the presence of the people who can contribute and decide.

One memorable example involved an investment application of approximately €100 million. The technical and commercial preparation was substantial. The actual joint discussion, however, took roughly two hours. The participants did not need to discover the basic facts in the meeting. The key questions were known, alternatives had been considered and the relevant decision-makers were present.

This experience helped shape what I call the Two-Hour Rule. It is not a promise that every major decision can be made in 120 minutes. Nor is it an invitation to skip risk assessment or due diligence. It is a discipline: do the analytical work beforehand, bring together the right people and use their shared time to resolve the issues that genuinely require collective judgement.

A useful preparation note can fit on a few pages: the decision required, the available options, the commercial and technical consequences, the most important uncertainties, the recommended course and the person authorised to decide. The purpose is not to produce another presentation. It is to make the decision discussable.

Two hours cannot replace thinking. But adequate thinking before the meeting can prevent ten people from spending two hours discovering that nobody has prepared.

The right people, not the largest audience

A familiar organisational reflex is to invite everyone who might be affected. This appears inclusive, but it can blur the difference between people who provide essential input, people who must decide and people who merely need to be informed afterwards.

In the industrial quotation process, a structured bill-of-quantities review—what I call the Mengengerüst-Durchsprache, or MGD—brings together sales, engineering, manufacturing, installation, estimating and purchasing before the offer is submitted. Each function knows something the others may miss. The value comes from confronting assumptions while they can still be corrected.

In my practical work, such reviews reduced the share of problematic estimating items from around 20 percent before discussion to below 3 percent afterwards. These figures reflect experience in a particular setting, not a universal benchmark. The broader lesson is that early cross-functional communication can prevent expensive surprises later.

Yet the objective is never to maximise attendance. Every participant should have a reason to be there: a necessary fact, a relevant risk, a decision right or an implementation responsibility. Others can be consulted beforehand or informed afterwards. Inclusion is valuable when it improves the decision; it is not a substitute for deciding.

A meeting is not successful because everybody has spoken. It is successful because something can be decided more intelligently afterwards.

Start with the decision, not slide one

Many meetings begin with a presentation. Slide one introduces the topic. Slide two lists the agenda. Slide three explains the project organisation. On slide 27, the problem finally appears. Slide 42 contains the proposed solution. Unfortunately, the meeting ends after slide 38.

A better opening is deceptively simple: “What decision do we need today?” That question immediately exposes whether the meeting has a purpose. If no decision is needed, perhaps the information can be shared asynchronously. If a decision is needed but the responsible person is absent, the meeting has been assembled incorrectly.

The next questions are equally practical. Which facts are agreed? Which assumptions are disputed? What is the consequence of delay? What would make the decision reversible or manageable? Who owns the next action, and by when?

This approach does not eliminate disagreement. It makes disagreement productive. Technical experts can challenge assumptions, commercial managers can explain financial consequences and project leaders can test implementation feasibility. The conversation is organised around a choice rather than around the sequence of presentation slides.

Sometimes the most productive meeting is the one that turns out not to be necessary. That discovery rarely earns a standing ovation from the calendar system.

A practical decision test

Before creating a new working group, I would ask five questions. First, what specific decision or deliverable is missing? Second, why can the existing responsible people not resolve it? Third, which perspectives are genuinely indispensable? Fourth, who has the authority to make or approve the decision? Fifth, what is the latest responsible date for action?

If those questions have clear answers, a short, focused discussion may be enough. If they do not, establishing a group is unlikely to solve the underlying ambiguity. It may simply give that ambiguity a chairperson and a recurring appointment.

For genuinely complex topics, a working group can still be the correct instrument. In that case it should have a defined mandate, a limited lifespan, explicit deliverables and a decision path. Its success should be measured by resolved issues and implemented actions, not by the number of workshops completed.

One further safeguard is useful: at each meeting, ask what can be stopped. A report that no longer informs a decision, a duplicate approval or an unnecessary review step consumes capacity that could be used to solve actual problems. Organisational discipline includes the courage to discontinue processes that have outlived their purpose.

POWER: responsibility does not disappear into a committee
My POWER framework connects Purpose, Organisation, Wisdom, Execution and Responsibility. These are not five decorative labels for a strategy slide. They describe conditions that must work together if a company wants to turn knowledge into results.

Purpose clarifies why a decision matters and which overall outcome takes precedence over departmental preferences. Organisation establishes responsibilities and decision rights. Wisdom brings relevant experience and evidence into the discussion. Execution converts an agreed choice into action. Responsibility ensures that the consequences are owned rather than passed from one committee to the next.

A working group may gather facts, compare alternatives and recommend a course. It cannot automatically absorb the accountability of a manager who is expected to decide. Responsibility can be formally delegated together with genuine authority, but it does not evaporate when more names are added to an invitation.

Good leadership therefore asks not only whether people are collaborating, but whether the collaboration is producing choices and action. The goal is not fewer meetings as an ideology. It is fewer unnecessary delays and better decisions when they matter.

The seventh meeting

Imagine our working group reconvening for its seventh session. The chair opens with unexpected news: “Ladies and gentlemen, the problem has been solved.” Silence follows. “By whom?” someone asks. “Two colleagues discussed it yesterday and implemented the solution.”

The room becomes very quiet. Eventually, one participant raises a hand. “Then I suggest we investigate why the solution was implemented without consulting this working group.” The others nod thoughtfully.

The next meeting is saved.

Perhaps that is the real leadership challenge: not to ensure that every problem receives a working group, but to make sure the right people are allowed to solve it before it becomes a permanent meeting series.