A room can be full and still hold no decision.
People attend a steering committee to stay informed, to represent a function, to be seen as involved. None of that is authority. Authority is the short list of people who can say yes, say no, and answer for it afterwards.
When the two are confused, the room grows and the decisions shrink:
• Twelve people attend.
• None of them, alone, can commit.
• So the meeting produces alignment, updates, action items — everything except a decision.
The clearest steering committees I have seen were not the largest. They were the ones where everyone knew, without asking, which two or three names carried the call.
Here is what to do with that before your next session.
Take the attendee list and mark each name with one word: deciding, or informed. Then look at the deciding column. If it holds more than three names, authority is diffuse — and every decision in that room will be slower than it needs to be. If a recurring agenda item has no decider on the list at all, you have found why it keeps coming back.
You do not need to remove anyone. You need to make the deciding names visible — to themselves and to the room. Authority that is named gets exercised. Authority that is assumed gets deferred.
Cordula Buss · Plan A2C / Helping finance and programme leaders build steering logic that works.