How to prepare a steering committee meeting?

Preparing your next project steering committee and not really sure what to expect? Then you need to spend more time on the preparation!

The goal of this article: help you strengthen that preparation and be ready for anything at your upcoming steering committee!

This article is part of the series Project steering committee: the basics, which covers the essential, simple and pragmatic things to know about the project steering committee.

Identifying and setting the objectives of a project steering committee

A SteerCo must not be just another meeting in your week or month. Nor is a steering committee a working group seen as a collaborative workshop to co-build the project; it shouldn't be used to answer operational or business questions you could have gathered elsewhere during the earlier phases of the project.

All of that must have been done upstream, in smaller working sessions (task force). And the project manager, as well as the sponsor, must have a very clear idea of what they expect from each session of a project steering committee.

"No Pain, No Gain"

The objectives of a committee cannot be reduced to an informational purpose or to keeping everyone informed and feeling valued.

If there is no problem to solve or anticipate, then the very point of holding a project steering committee is strictly useless. Steering committees are generally held every 45 to 60 days or so throughout the project, so the idea is to focus on what could be a problem right now or by the next committee(s).

The steering committee must help the project manager mobilize and activate the resources or actions the project needs and that require the support of the sponsor and the company's top managers. They must be able to lean on the sponsor to get what they need to see the project through.

"There is no favorable wind for the one who doesn't know where they're going"

Your ability to define the objectives well will depend on the preparation work done by the project manager upstream, but also on their ability to listen, assess and anticipate the risks and blocking factors identified throughout the project's implementation.

These meetings will have far more impact if they help the project manager unblock downstream aspects of the project, de-risk others, or drive key decisions the project manager isn't in a position to make elsewhere.

That's why it's important to gather upstream all the elements needed for steering committee decision-making, and to have proposed a strategy to the sponsor, along with recommendations on the various possible options and their impacts, before the day of the SteerCo. The project manager must know more or less precisely where each project stakeholder stands, so there are no surprises during the steering committee.

The sponsor must not discover anything during the steering committee

Whether it's the project manager or the sponsor, neither of them should discover sizing elements, information or member positions that could undermine the ability to arbitrate and decide during the SteerCo — at the risk of making it ineffective and having to postpone it. Or even, in some cases, calling the project itself into question.

The project manager's role is therefore to investigate and gather this type of information, in order to summarize it for the sponsor, continuously and throughout the project. The sponsor needs to be told about potential blocking factors, risks and problems, so they can fully play their sponsor role.

Contrary to what you may usually hear, don't raise these key points to the sponsor only two or three days before the project steering committee. The idea is to give them time to assess the situations and make the right decisions. To do so, you can submit a strategy to adopt, but keep in mind that they need time ahead of them.

Putting the project above personal interests

The project and the SteerCo must not become a platform for personalities to push through their personal priorities or interests. Gathering so many of the company's key people around the table could tempt some to drift away from the meeting plan.

Having a tight agenda and managing personalities well is obviously part of the solution. But it's worth adding a good communication plan to showcase everyone's involvement. This is also where the project manager must set their ego aside. If the project succeeds, it's not thanks to them, but thanks to everyone's participation. And if they give ambitious personalities enough reasons to shine through the project in the company's overall interest, then they'll have fulfilled a sometimes difficult part of their mission.

Staying close to the field and to the steering committee members

Collecting information about the reality on the ground and the associated blockers, and strengthening the leadership of the cross-functional project manager: that's one of your roles. We can also mention showing that you listen to and consider all stakeholders' opinions. And gathering where some people stand on the project, sounding out those who will make operations easier as well as those who will slow it down.

What matters here is being able to anticipate the risks or enabling factors for the project, and truly listening to business feedback. This will also let you detect and identify any tension, frustration or unspoken issue that must be handled before and outside the project steering committee. The first approach is for the project manager to try to understand, find solutions or defuse it — and, in a second step, if that doesn't work or carries too much risk, to lean on the sponsor for the right strategy to adopt.

A reminder of the key objectives of a project steering committee

• Make decisions and trade-offs.
• Ensure the project runs smoothly and check that it is aligned with the company's overall strategies.
• Assess the quality and health of the project at each meeting. If certain issues need improvement, the key stakeholders can raise them so they get resolved.
• Give the project manager the power to act and to use the company's resources to drive execution and progress.
• Resolve conflicts between departments, and issues related to cost, time, risk, resources, quality and scope.
• Monitor the project's progress against the agreed objectives and resolve the problems preventing the project from progressing on time.

Your entire preparation must revolve around these points and make it possible to meet these objectives.

The keys to preparing your next project steering committee

Running a SteerCo is no easy task — so you might as well plan it with precision to face it with peace of mind!

Having gathered all the information needed for decision-making and trade-offs

The project steering committee is the moment to address every aspect of the project that requires a clear-cut stance or strategic choices/decisions. For that, everyone must be able to speak up, give their opinion or raise attention points, and leave the committee with all these decisions formalized so the project can move forward properly.

You must have identified, listed and prepared with the sponsor, in advance and continuously, all the elements of the project that require such decisions or corrective actions at the next SteerCo.

The members of a project steering committee must know in advance which key decisions are on the next SteerCo's agenda, so everyone has time to think through and assess the impact of the decisions. All documents, agenda and appendices, must be sent at least one week, and ideally two weeks, before the day of the steering committee.

For all this, it is therefore essential that the expected objectives and deliverables are clear, and that the rules of the game for decision-making and the governance principles have been established. This shared reading grid creates a framework known and understood by all — which speeds up decision-making.

Establishing feedback to anticipate blocking factors

If you spend enough time with — and truly listen to — the project SteerCo members, you'll collect their vision and get a clear sense of where the project stands for them. At the same time, this lets you identify the technical, political and financial issues that wouldn't be voiced during the project steering committee.

Especially when there are strong, unshared positions or major disagreements between stakeholders who sometimes don't have the same power/influence in the company, you can miss key elements if this creates unspoken issues and frustrations.

Put the right tools in place to collect information. In many cases, some information isn't shared simply because there's no suitable forum or meeting for it:

Quick-to-fill, anonymous feedback forms

The specific medium doesn't matter. It must be anonymous and quick to fill in — because what matters is that everyone fills it in. Use it sparingly to keep participation up. A tool like Typeform will do the job perfectly, and will give the project manager and the sponsor a very good idea of where members stand on how the project is being run. From time to time, it will also surface information that would otherwise remain unspoken.

Meetings on the sidelines of SteerCos, or project working sessions

To smooth out the project's stages, the project manager — depending on upcoming needs — will make sure to involve, in the thinking, the action or by anticipation, the business teams relevant to executing the current or future project, and the managers of the departments concerned when resources are needed. The sponsor can take over with the top managers for resource needs. The idea here is that everyone knows the needs before the project steering committee, to make arbitration easier on the day of the SteerCo.

Planning the SteerCo well in advance

Making sure all stakeholders attend

The more important the role or influence the steering committee members have in the company, the harder it will be to find a slot that works for everyone. And when not all stakeholders are present, you add extra risks of non-decisions or partial decisions for project management.

To avoid this, schedule your project steering committee 45 or 60 days in advance. That should be enough — but remember to adapt to your organization and allow more margin if needed.

Making sure all stakeholders have enough time to prepare

If the project needs resources, business or third-party answers, or reflection on upcoming decisions, the project manager must leave everyone enough time to do what's expected of them before the project steering committee. And as seen above: send them the agenda at least two weeks in advance.

A concise deck and an agenda that goes straight to the point

• List of participants
• Decisions from the last steering committee
• Performance: planned roadmap vs. actual progress / planned budget vs. spend to date
• The next big milestones and stakes
• Dashboard (overview), tracking of project progress and KPIs
• Decisions to make
• Questions
• Next steps
• Dates and milestones of the next project steering committee

Be careful not to use a presentation medium that goes into too much detail, like project management tools. The risk? Losing many attendees during the meeting. If you want to save time without spending hours redoing a PowerPoint for every steering committee, and give visibility on the essential elements for a SteerCo, the AirSaas tool was specifically designed to solve those problems.

To go further on the topic, discover our presentation template for your steering committee.

Presenting positive news is also a way to anticipate blocking factors

Whether it's to recognize the work done or to share good results, avoid inertia in a project, disengagement, and the feeling that the project isn't moving forward — or not as planned.

It's also the moment to channel the more ambitious personalities by highlighting the work done that serves the project's direction and interest, rewarding good behaviors and making the cross-functional management of these resources easier.

The project manager and the sponsor must not neglect the perception the project gives stakeholders. The project must be a driver of positive change, and a good communication plan means making sure you keep a good dynamic for the rest of the project. Real change management must be at work!

Knowing and anticipating objections before the steering committee

As you'll have understood from this article: the emphasis is on people and human relationships. They are so often at the root of project failures that they represent major attention points in project management. With all the preparation work described above, the project manager must now know all the members' objections and prepare the right action plan with the sponsor.

For any objections during the steering committee that weren't anticipated, or that you decided to set aside, you can always "be vague, precisely..." — use the fridge/parking-lot trick developed in our other article: Project steering committee: 5 tips to make everything go smoothly.