The Problem with Management by Committee
Consensus feels collaborative, but it often slows decisions and erodes momentum. Here’s how leaders can balance consultation with clear ownership and decisive action.
Editor’s Note: This piece sits in the Leadership & Work in Practice layer of the Cultivated library. It explores decision-making as a leadership responsibility and the hidden cost of consensus paralysis.
The Problem with Management by Committee
There is a quiet pattern I see across organisations that appears healthy, collaborative, and inclusive
—yet often slows progress to a crawl.
I call it management by committee.
And in practice, it can become a subtle form of organisational self-sabotage.
Most people think committees are formal governance groups that approve decisions. What I see more often is managers outsourcing decisions to their teams in the name of inclusion.
Consulting people is good management.
Abdicating responsibility is not.
When Consensus Becomes Paralysis
I’ve seen three patterns repeat.
One manager refused to act without unanimous agreement.
Decisions became rare.
When they happened, they were diluted compromises that solved nothing and created tomorrow’s problems.
Another manager spoke to everyone individually before acting.
Weeks passed in conversations.
Momentum evaporated.
Frustration grew.
The role eventually changed hands due to lack of progress.
A leadership team tried to standardise on a cloud platform.
They agreed in the room.
Outside the room, everyone continued with their own preference.
No decision held.
Costs and complexity multiplied.
The leader avoided pulling rank—and the organisation paid for it.
Seeking 100% agreement sounds noble.
In practice, it often erodes momentum, clarity, and accountability.
Disagree and Commit
In two decades of leadership, I cannot recall a strategic decision everyone agreed with.
Nor should they.
A healthier pattern and behaviour is disagree and commit.
People share concerns.
Their input is considered seriously.
A decision is made.
Everyone commits
—even if it wasn’t their preferred path.
This preserves dissent without destroying alignment.
The Manager’s Responsibility
Some decisions simply belong to management:
- Strategic direction
- Financial choices
- Addressing underperformance
- Operational priorities
- Fixing services under pressure
Managers work for the organisation.
Our role is to solve business problems with people, not to crowdsource every decision to everyone.
Not every opinion carries equal weight.
Some people enjoy conflict.
Others lack context, experience, or commercial understanding.
Listening matters
—but leadership requires judgment.
A Simple Decision-Making Framework
To avoid management by committee while still harnessing collective intelligence:
- Clearly define the problem.
- Consult trusted experts.
- Gather evidence and data.
- Create a small set of viable options.
- Share for feedback.
- Integrate valid input.
- Finalise the direction.
- Make the decision — decisions close options.
- Encourage disagree and commit.
- Implement with energy and focus.
You will rarely achieve unanimous agreement.
That is not the goal.
The goal is movement toward value.
The Bottom Line
The manager who never consults the team should worry.
The manager who insists on full consensus will rarely move forward.
The best managers listen deeply, decide clearly, and move deliberately.
Management is not about pleasing everyone. It is about creating clarity, alignment, and momentum in service of outcomes.
Disagree and commit is not a slogan.
It is a behaviour worth cultivating.
This piece forms part of Cultivated’s wider body of work on how ideas become valuable, and how better work is built.
To explore further:
→ Library — a curated collection of long-form essays
→ Ideas — developing thoughts and shorter writing
→ Learn — practical guides and tools from across the work
→ Work with us — thoughtful partnership for teams and organisations
