Steering Success

⏰ Today in 5 minutes or less:

• What’s the ideal SteerCo size and how to select them.

• Why you need someone who hates the idea on your SteerCo.

• Simplifying your SteerCo decks = amplifying your points.

Own the Meeting Room With Lauren Wambold Patel

Steering committees. 

If still they make you shake in your boots after all these years, you’re doing it wrong. 

They’re intimidating, but they don’t have to be if you know how to manage one. 

I’m Lauren Wambold Patel, former BCG consultant turned founder and CEO of Keenan Reid Strategies.

I’ve been a consultant for over 20 years, parachuting into new teams more times than I can count. And like others, I used to find SteerCos daunting – after all, you’re joining as a junior and putting a few senior executives in a room to debate, or worse, fight. 

But I eventually realized that there’s a pattern you can use to make SteerCo meetings more successful than the last. 

In this interview, we’re trying something new – with my good friend Ben Manwaring holding the mic and interviewing me about what I think is the key to SteerCo success. 

Here’s the full story:

For many, the idea of a steering committee sparks fear, or even dread – a kind of professional trauma response. You've turned this common weakness into a strength with tools and strategies to make them effective. Why did you choose to focus on this area? 

Lauren: I think it's because I'm really good at pretending. And for me, SteerCos have always felt like being on stage. It's like being in a middle school play where it's kind of terrifying in the prep and you're like putting on a costume and it's all new.

But at the end of the day, your preparation for it and confidence to be on stage, projecting a persona, is how you get good at it.

And for a lot of people, it does a lot of different things. I do think it provokes a trauma response in a lot of consultants because of terrible moments in their career associated with it. If a long-time management consultant reflects on their career, some of their worst moments are in SteerCo meetings.

It’s because there’s a lot on the line for both the company's perspective and client's perspective, as well as the way you're perceived by your client and your firm. It’s something that can have a huge positive or negative career impact.

I agree with that sentiment, but I also believe that managing a SteerCo right is how you drive effective implementation. Even if you're early in the process, getting the buy-in and the people parts of the SteerCo right seems really hard, but it’s actually pretty easy.

So I went back, and I thought “do I do this differently from other people?” The answer was yes and from there, I started thinking about “what do I actually do?”

After a while, I realized that I had a SteerCo checklist to make sure I’m doing it right. I also noticed there were little things like pitfalls or strengths that weren’t obvious things at first. Some of them may seem small, but that's the kind of stuff I get excited about, because those are the practical things that anybody can take and succeed with.  

I think there's a real key in what you said about projecting confidence. What steps do you take to prepare for that first session, and what strategies have you found most effective for SteerCo kickoffs? 

Lauren: For me, preparing for a SteerCo takes about three to four weeks. The deck is what first comes to mind, but it’s more than just the slides.

I noticed that the slides follow the same pattern. There are typically three decks to prepare – the SteerCo kickoff, subsequent SteerCo meetings, and the recommendation deck. They more or less follow the same structure regardless of the project.

You might think about “How am I going to tell a story?” But you also have to remember that these SteerCo members are senior executives, so you need to use their time wisely. There’s no need to reinvent the meeting every time because it runs into one of those three ways – you just need a pattern to better prepare yourself for it.

The run up to that first SteerCo meeting takes three to four weeks. Each of the key activities across those weeks boils down to getting people to align outside the room before you go into the room.

There's a practice to this so let's walk through it.

Step One is making sure you have the right people. If you don't have the right SteerCo members upfront, all of this is for nothing. I’ll give you a list of the people you need:

• The decision maker. That one’s obvious. 

• People who are going to be executives when the implementation happens. They must be a part of the learning and thought process to help shape that decision and ultimately, do the right thing around it.

• The other person who hates the idea, to help you create and solve the debate around the project. 

That being said, you don’t want too many people and turn this into an executive town hall because that's just setting million dollars on fire. Think about what those people make on an hourly basis, ending up in a room you just set on fire.

Once you get to this meeting, it turns into a debate because there's so much on the line. Best case scenario, it’s a hearty debate; worst case scenario, it's a dumpster fire of a fight.

And after you identify all those people, my pro tip here is to spell their names right and know how to pronounce them.

Remember, the path to success is paved with continuous learning and embracing fresh perspectives.

Let's stay connected, share ideas, and elevate your consulting business.

Stay curious, friends.

The 2×2 is brought to you by Keenan Reid Strategies

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