A wise person, lost in anonymity to the ages, described the platypus as a duck designed by a committee. It is exactly the sort of useless thing a committee would come up with.
Committees can be counted on for two things - delay and compromise. GM demonstrated this point quite ably. While its chairmen and CEO's over the decades made financial decisions with authority everything related to products and processes was decided through the ponderous bureaucracy of its Automotive Strategy Board, and a blizzard of lesser committees - no big surprise that decisions were made slowly, cultural transformation was non-existent and every innovative suggestion was thoroughly watered down before taking effect, if it ever came out of the committees to take effect at all.
Committees are also effective tools for ducking responsibility and accountability. If the decision can be made by a committee, then no one is individually to blame for failure.
That is just what committees do, and they are no substitute for clear vision and decisive leadership. Committees are a way of life in government and academia, and neither is much of a model for aggressive action.
A lean transformation cannot be driven by a 'steering committee' or any other kind of committee. It has to be driven by senior leaders who know exactly where they want to take the organization.
Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/platypus-leadership/