An all too common practice in corporate America is decision by committee. Countless meetings are held each week where people stare at each other across conference room tables and decide not to decide – productivity at it finest. This tradition is especially painful when applied to creative decision making. Advertising, marketing, branding and even web design is incredibly complex and subjective.

Because of the variety of skills and knowledge of its members, the committee is viewed by management as an entity with built in checks and balances thus lessening the risk of a bad decision. This is a fallacy; plenty of bad decisions come from committees. The possibility of a good design getting approved by a committee is slim. The result is what the committee considers safe, and safe is usually not good. With creativity, without risk there’s little reward.

In order to communicate visually, like with graphic design, a certain amount of responsibility is placed on the viewer. When viewers have different backgrounds, educations and experiences their level of understanding varies greatly. Even after several hours of explanation and justification by the creator, the decision makers often don’t comprehend and perceive what they’re seeing similarly.

Ever experience a group of people in a committee deciding what to order for lunch? Pizza seems to be popular, but if you followed each person to lunch individually, I bet none eat pizza. Why do people choose something as a group they would not choose themselves? Some people think “what would they think rather than what do I think.” People that may not be qualified to make a sound decision as individuals are able to influence others in a committee. People that avoid conflict go with the flow increasing the majority. These phenomena are termed ‘group think’ and lead to bad results in committees.

How can this unfortunate situation be avoided? As creators and experts, it’s our job to persuade our clients against this creative decision making approach. Ask your client to choose a qualified stakeholder with the knowledge, experience and ability to make the definitive decision. He/she may choose, or be required to get input from others, and should do so, but the dynamics here are different than with a committee. If they are unwilling to do so because they do not have the right person, their trust must be gained to allow you, as the expert, to make the decision for them. If they won’t do that because it’s not how they do things, be prepared to deal with the tedious task of getting buy in from the majority.

When going into a project ask how decisions are going to be made and if it’s by committee make sure you account for the extra effort required to communicate the design concept and gain sufficient understanding from the group for approval. Carefully planned presentations and one-on-one explanations will be needed. These can quickly consume a lot of unexpected hours from the budget. Also in the proposal detail how you plan to communicate with the group, the revision/approval process, what is in scope and what happens when the process gets excessive.