The Committee Will Not Save You
A crisis arrives. The response: form a committee. The committee meets. The committee produces a report. The report recommends further study. Further study is conducted. A second committee is formed to evaluate the findings. The second committee recommends a pilot program. The pilot program is funded, staffed, and scheduled to begin in eighteen months.
The crisis, which did not receive the schedule, continues.
I have watched this process so many times that I can now identify the exact moment when the energy of genuine concern is converted into the machinery of institutional delay. It is the moment someone says: “We need to be thoughtful about this.”