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. Indeed, only the physical impossibility of a unitary object travelling in two distinct directions at once would prevent a committee steering into every wall.
These are truths we hold to be self evident.
Yet—every day, in every organisation, 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, by steering committees.
Most metaphors don’t bear close examination. This one does.
See also
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