People get waste wrong a lot.

Start with the most basic process analysis technique there is: black box analysis.

As my consulting firm practices the trade – and honesty demands that I acknowledge the synonymity between “my consulting firm” and “me” – a black box is defined by four process parameters: (1) outputs, or what the process produces; (2) inputs, or what it converts into its outputs; (3) resources, the tools the process uses to convert inputs into outputs; and (4) constraints, which are forces, and conditions that must be taken into account when using resources to convert inputs into outputs.

What is waste, then? With black box analysis as our guide, waste is nothing more than process outputs the process stakeholders don’t want. Burn a log, for example, and you get heat to warm you up (a desired output) and CO2 (waste).

This is a bit different from how I often hear the word used. Often, it’s that waste is a process output that I don’t want. That’s selfish.

Or, it’s a constraint the process owner doesn’t like, and especially any process steps that wouldn’t be necessary without the constraint. At the risk of excessive nitpicking, constraint-driven process steps generate outputs. Audit reports are an example. They’re an output that might look like waste to the process owner, but are actually the inputs to some other process – regulatory reporting, for example.

Then there’s the consultant’s favorite: whole processes that can be dispensed with. Except that this is exactly the same as the black-box definition of waste, extended to processes that produce only outputs no one wants.

Which gets us to this week’s subject – effective governance, managed by governance councils, as opposed to governance committees. As we discussed last week, (or if you aren’t in the mood to click the link), a committee is a group whose members are there to look out for their area’s interests and negotiate deals that do so.

A council, in contrast, is composed of members all of whom consider themselves leaders of the whole company and collaborate to make decisions that help make the enterprise more competitive in its marketplace.

But … and there’s always a “but,” isn’t there, unless there’s a “however” to take its place … but, I say, councils are at constant risk of decaying into committees. All that’s needed is one member who violates the we’re-all-leaders-of-the-whole-company principle.

Because, as was also pointed out last week, when negotiating treaties about nuclear weapons, unilateral disarmament is a synonym for “surrender.”

How can an organization charter a council in a way that either encourages its members to continue to be whole-enterprise leaders, or, failing that, discourages its members from devolving into representatives?

This is very much the same challenge a company’s executive leadership faces when trying to eliminate organizational silos, only instead of managers running their departments as if they’re competing with the department down the hall, they’re negotiating with other council members using the same logic.

Same mindset, different scope of action.

The solution isn’t particularly complicated: Look at every manager’s incentives and make sure they encourage desirable attitudes and behavior.

Except that you’re unlikely to have the authority and sphere of action to do this.

Simple solution #2: Call the offending council member on it. It isn’t hard to spot someone who’s negotiating on their own behalf. Point it out – good naturedly, as there’s no point in getting someone like this on your wrong side – but point it out directly. “Now Pat,” you might say, “it’s clear how what you’re advocating would be helpful to HR, but not how it would be useful to any other department. If you ran manufacturing instead of human resources, would you still be advocating this?”

Or, there is a third approach. Form a small, temporary team – three members is a good size – and have them collaborate offline to resolve whatever decision the governance council is wresting with. Ask for volunteers and choose two you know you can trust to keep everyone else honest.

Bob’s last word: We might have just discovered a new law of thermodynamics. You might recall Ginsberg’s restatement of the (up until just now) three laws of thermodynamics: You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t quit the game.

Our newly discovered fourth law? The more highly optimized a system is, the more unstable it is.

Bob’s sales pitch: If you’d like the KJR take on just about anything (I’ve written 1,700 or so of these missives, so good, bad, or indifferent you’re likely to find something that fits), you’re invited to search the archives as my guest. You might, for example, be interested in what else I’ve had to say about organizational siloes. Search for “silo” and you’ll find 40 mentions (this was my favorite).

Who was it that chartered and signed the Declaration of Independence? The Constitution of the United States of America?

Interestingly enough, these, which along with the Magna Carta are probably the most important political documents ever written, were both the result of committees or some similar organizational structure.

It’s a structure about which John Adams famously said, “In my many years, I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress,” a statement more complimentary than many of the others you’ll find with just a wee bit o’ googling.

So how is it that such an unlovely organizational form has been capable of achieving such great things?

In my consulting work I frequently find myself recommending that a client charter an organization of some sort to do the hard work of making decisions about some domain or other.

It’s an unlovely and unpopular solution to a class of problems that stubbornly resists anything more elegant.

These entities are commonly known as governance committees, and far too often they’re where progress goes to die.

But they don’t have to be studies in dysfunction.

Some years ago, watching one of these hapless assemblages of individually smart and talented executives mire themselves in ever-expanding parking lots of unresolved challenges, the solution emerged from the miasma.

It was difficult to achieve but not particularly complicated.

It’s recognizing the difference between a committee and what I now call a “council.” That difference?

A committee’s members are each responsible for representing their area of oversight. A council’s members, in contrast, each think of themselves as leaders of the entire company. They bring knowledge of the areas they’re responsible for, and different perspectives about any number of subjects, but their scope of leadership is broader.

Because a committee’s members are representatives, their job is, for each of the committee’s decisions, to get the best deal possible for their area.

And because, in contrast, each member of a council is a leader of the whole organization while sharing knowledge about their areas of responsibility, councils are capable of sponsoring solutions that benefit the organization as a whole.

Put simply, dysfunctional organizations end up with win/lose solutions; while the best committees might get to win/wins.

Councils, though, by their very nature, are capable of achieving the next level: win.

Imagine, for example, we’re talking about a company that wants to design, build, and sell the next-generation electric vehicle.

There are any number of design decisions that have to be made, and so the company forms a committee to govern these decisions.

And every meeting is another exhausting and tendentious argument, with the battery contingent wanting a greater share of weight and space reserved for the storage and distribution of electricity; the motors representative wanting separate motors for each wheel; while the braking engineer wants as much deceleration as possible handled by the car’s alternators and as little as possible wearing out the brake pads.

Contrast that with the competitor that forms a design governance council. There are no representatives lobbying for their design component. There are company leaders who all want the same thing – to sell cars as many car-buyers as possible want to buy and drive.

Is there any question which company will gain the greatest marketshare?

Again: Nothing about forming a council is particularly complicated. Which isn’t to say it’s easy. Every member has to understand the difference between the council they’re invited to join and what’s expected of them in convening it. And they have to commit to it.

So far so good, but as is the case with so many things, construction is easier than maintenance. It’s in the nature of groups-that-are-responsible-for-decisions to backslide – for members to forget that they aren’t there to look out for their group’s interests. And once one member starts trading in design compromises so as to get the best deal, all the others will immediately recognize that, as is also the case when negotiating treaties about nuclear weapons, unilateral disarmament is a synonym for “surrender.”

Bob’s last word: The solution to the backsliding challenge is very much the same as the initial distinction between councils and committees. Leadership is as much what’s needed to keep it all working as it was to get the council started in the first place.

In the case of what makes councils more effective than committees, the difference between being a leader and being a representative is the solution.

In the case of preventing backsliding it’s leadership on the part of the council’s chair, or perhaps its facilitator that does the job.

Or, it’s leadership on the part of the council’s other members, who all have the job of calling out a member who’s falling back into their old Representative habits.

Now on CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “Brilliance: The CIO’s most seductive career-limiting trait.” Any executive, but especially CIOs, aren’t supposed to have all the great ideas. Executives, and that includes the CIO, are supposed to be information brokers, finding and promoting the ideas that matter most.