At some point in the process, you may need to form steering committee(s) and working group(s). Exactly when you do this will vary depending upon any number of factors such as your position in the firm, the level of support you have from senior managers, and the exact nature of your innovation or technical change. The large number of possible combinations of factors and outcomes is too numerous for us to deal with in any detail.
Generally speaking, there are several points at which it is good to formulate a steering committee and a work group. One way to approach the issue is that when there is more work than you can get done alone, it is a good time to get some help. At the senior management level, when you need the cooperation and support of division and department heads, it may be a good time to formulate a steering committee that can take on the responsibility of over-seeing the project, removing any road-blocks that are brought to its attention, providing resources and support, etc. Working groups need to be formed when a set of tasks have been identified that can be formulated into a project.
For example, if we are going to implement an e-mail system, we may not need a full-fledged steering committee, and the working group may consist of the two or three people assigned to the project. At another extreme, we may be re-engineering a large organisation. In this case, we may want a high-level steering committee overseeing the entire process and acting as an organisation-level working group, with three, four or more working groups assigned to carry out specific re-engineering sub-projects within various areas or across processes that have been identified by the steering committee as needing attention.
[See information on selecting people for groups.]
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