🗓 Coming 4 August 2026 — subscribe now so you don’t miss it.
The committee has been discussing the same issue for three months. Someone suggests leaving it for the next committee to decide. Someone else wants to table it until there’s more information. Staff are frustrated. Members are confused. And the committee is going around in circles.
Deferring is a decision too. It’s usually the worst one available.
In this episode Kate H and Kate M go deeper into decision-making — not the mechanics of motions and votes (that was Episode 13) but the harder questions: why committees avoid making decisions at all, and how to make good ones when they finally get there.
In this episode:
- Why the committee keeps having the same discussion without reaching a resolution — and what’s really driving it
- The difference between legitimate deferral and avoidance — and the one thing that separates them
- The five principles of good decision-making — and why answering yes to all five protects every committee member, even when a decision doesn’t go according to plan
- Why documenting your decision-making process is your protection — not a perfect outcome?
Plus a decision-making checklist from the Committee Companion