Steering committee

We do not find it remarkable that, in a century and a half of automotive technology, the drafters of the Highway Code have never found the space to sanction the operation of a vehicle by consensus. A car is more likely - these days, far more likely - effectively to drive itself than been driven by a committee. A committee will steer it into the nearest wall. Only the physical difficulty of travelling in two directions at once prevents a committee steering into every wall.

Yet thousands upon thousands of well-intentioned employees spend their lives on, subject to or being vigorously propelled about the confines of their employer's premises like tiny passengers in a deflating balloon, pummelled at every random turn by obtacle, intransigence and sheer bloody-minded stupidity, at the “direction” of a steering committee. Usually several.

Steering committee

See also