Sounds almost ridiculous … and it probably is.

But think about it a bit. Most watershed grants are 3 years or so, you get a group together to form a steering committee, which meets monthly for a couple of hours — well you can see where I am going (3 x 12 x 2 = 72). That is not a lot of time to oversee the management of grant resources that are in the tens of or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Add the fact that most of the “steering committee” is composed of interested folk, volunteering their time – not necessarily CEO’s, MBA’s or management professionals and we have set quite a task before us.

Somewhere in the mix we need a few good individuals that are task oriented and can run meetings effectively. They will also need a good dose of conflict management and consensus building. Otherwise, time lines will slip, things left undone only to be brought up at the next meeting (again) and eventually the groups enthusiasm will fall off. This is the “where have all the stakeholders gone” syndrome.

In addition to a few good leaders, perhaps one of the most important people on the steering committee, and all the other committees is … the secretary/recorder/scribe whatever, that keeps the record of the meeting(s) including both goals met and tasks to be completed. Minutes can be a great management tool if: 1) they are accurate, 2) define the “who, what, when, where” for upcoming tasks and 3) are distributed soon after the meeting is over.

Too often I see meeting minutes attached with the email reminder for the next meeting or even distributed at the next meeting itself, then “approved” as part of the normal order of business. Now the stuff that didn’t get done is a month or two older and still undone.

Try to assign the “who” and the “what” along with the “when” in the minutes and get them distributed ASAP . This will remind folks of stuff that needs to be done, and also offers the committee chair the opportunity to give a follow-up nudge between meetings. I think you will be surprised how much more productive your watershed group will be