The air in Conference Room B, on the 17th floor, felt thick, a viscous blend of recycled oxygen and stale ambition. My gaze drifted across the faces, each etched with a familiar mix of resignation and carefully masked frustration. We were, all eight of us, convened to dissect the foundational principles-the very raison d’être-of a committee whose sole purpose would be to select the members of yet another committee.

The proposal had been circulating for what felt like 25 weeks, a document that had swollen to 45 pages, each one dense with jargon and passive voice. We’d already spent at least 15 minutes debating the precise font size for the sub-headings in Section 3.5, as if the aesthetic presentation of our eventual non-action was more critical than the action itself. The true mission, the ‘new initiative’ that had sparked this whole exercise, seemed as distant and ephemeral as a forgotten dream from 5 nights ago.

The Illusion of Problem-Solving

This isn’t problem-solving. It never was. In large organizations, the creation of committees, particularly those tasked with overseeing other committees, isn’t a problem-solving mechanism. It’s a risk-diffusion mechanism, plain and simple. Its true, insidious function is to make failure an orphan. When a grand project inevitably falters, as many do, who is to blame? Not the Steering Committee, because they were just guiding. Not the Task Force, because they were just proposing options. And certainly not the Committee to Approve the Committee, for their mandate was purely structural. The blame dissipates, evaporating into the organizational ether, leaving no fingerprints, no single person accountable.

It made me think of my old friend, Ethan R.-M. Ethan’s world is one of elegant precision. He’s a fragrance evaluator, able to distinguish 5 subtle notes in a perfume that most of us would simply call ‘floral.’ He once told me, ‘You can’t blend 5 perfect essences by committee. You need a singular vision, a decisive nose, or you end up with something vaguely pleasant but ultimately forgettable.’ His words echoed in my mind, a sharp, fragrant contrast to the sterile air of our meeting. Imagine commissioning a new perfume and then establishing a panel to decide on the exact ratio of base notes to top notes, followed by a separate approval body to validate the panel’s expertise. The perfume would never be released, or if it was, it would smell of compromise and fear.

The Comfort of Stagnation

I’ll admit, there’s a part of me, a deeply ingrained bureaucratic instinct, that has, on occasion, found solace in this structure. When faced with a genuinely thorny problem, one with 105 variables and the potential for significant blowback, the idea of spreading the load, of creating layers of insulation, can be incredibly appealing. It’s a defense mechanism. But it’s a false sense of security. Because while it might protect individuals from the immediate sting of failure, it guarantees systemic stagnation. It ensures that no single person is ever truly accountable for a decision, which is, ironically, the riskiest position of all for an organization aiming for innovation and agility.

This paralyzing self-replication isn’t unique to our organization, of course. I remember falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole recently, reading about the Byzantine Empire’s administrative structures. At its height, the sheer complexity of offices and titles, many overlapping, many purely ceremonial, led to incredible delays and inefficiencies. Decisions that should have taken 15 days often stretched into 195. It was a fascinating, if depressing, parallel. The more layers you add, the more friction you create, and the less actual work gets done. It’s the law of diminishing returns, dressed up in official titles and meeting minutes. The energy that should be directed outward, toward actual goals and client needs, gets consumed inward, maintaining the very apparatus that’s supposed to facilitate progress.

Consider the absurdity of it. Imagine asking a professional cleaner to form a sub-committee to discuss the best way to clean your kitchen counter, then another to approve the cleaning method, and another to interview the towel-folder. It’s absurd. You want someone who just does the job, efficiently and thoroughly. That’s the kind of directness you find with quality service providers, like those who offer deep cleaning services kansas city. They understand that real value isn’t found in layers of approval, but in effective, visible results that reflect actual effort and expertise, not committee consensus. It’s about getting the job done right, the first time, not debating the charter for a committee on dust removal protocols.

The True Cost of Inaction

The real cost of the Committee to Approve the Committee is rarely measured in just salaries or meeting room rentals. It’s the opportunity cost, the innovative ideas that never see the light of day because they’re bogged down in a 5-step approval process. It’s the erosion of morale, as talented people realize their impact is diluted by endless discussions about discussion frameworks. It’s the subtle shift from focusing on external results to internal process compliance. When I look around the room at these 7 other earnest, capable individuals, I see a tremendous reservoir of talent being diverted into validating structures, rather than building solutions. We are all complicit, to varying degrees. We’ve all learned the language of committee-speak, the art of pre-meeting meetings, the subtle dance of deferring responsibility just enough to avoid being the sole bearer of bad news.

We talked for another 55 minutes about the “scope of authority” for the proposed committee’s subcommittee. It was a fascinating circular argument, spiraling inward until the original goal was completely obscured. It wasn’t about the initiative anymore; it was about the committee’s right to exist, to define itself, to justify its own creation. It became an end in itself, a self-sustaining organism feeding on bureaucracy. There’s a certain tragic elegance to it, a perfect, self-sealing system designed to prevent action while appearing to be intensely busy.

The Courage of Decision

I’ve made this mistake myself, more times than I care to admit. Believing that if I just created the right committee, with the perfect charter, that the problem would solve itself. That structure would magically generate outcome. It rarely does. It generates more structure. It’s a pattern I’ve come to recognize, a kind of bureaucratic Stockholm Syndrome where you start to believe the process is the product. The truth is, sometimes, you don’t need a committee. You need courage. You need a person, or a small, empowered group of 2 or 3, to make a decision, own it, and adapt based on feedback. And yes, sometimes they will make mistakes. But those mistakes will be visible, learnable, and attributed. They won’t be orphaned by layers of well-meaning, yet ultimately paralyzing, deliberation.

The silence that followed our 5th vote on a minor procedural point was deafening. It wasn’t a silence of agreement, but one of exhaustion. We had successfully charted the path for a committee that would, eventually, nominate people for another committee, which in turn might, after another 105 meetings, actually decide something. We left the room, each of us carrying the quiet burden of collective inaction, wondering if the initiative would even matter by the time the last committee had approved its own existence.