The Role of Steering Committees in an M&R Implementation with Shon Isenhour

We’re glad to have Shon Isenhour, a founding partner at Eruditio, back with us. He was heavily involved in maintenance and reliability, industry, consulting and finally started Eruditio. He’ll help us know more about the role of a steering committee in maintenance and reliability implementations. That’s because many companies struggle with getting leadership and the lower levels of the organization on board. A steering committee is there to help with that change and implementation, but it’s often overlooked.

What is the Steering Committee?

You may hear it called a steering committee or even a leadership team. Whatever the name, it’s a group of leaders that set the vision, develop the communication strategy, and remove roadblocks throughout the implementation stage. They’re there to make sure that the implementation process is successful.

Why do we need a Steering Committee?

The steering committee casts a clear vision of its reliability, maintenance improvement, or asset management goals. John Connor mentions that you have to have a guiding coalition if you want to make an organizational change. It would be best if you made sure the group exists and is active, keeping in mind that their roles, focus, and intensity change over time.

Who and which roles should be on the Steering Committee?

Start by looking at where your organization is and what you’re trying to do. Generically, for reliability implementation, you’d need about 8 – 10 people on the leadership team. It’s important to have people from different parts of the organization to get a cross-functional team.

What is the role of the Steering Committee?

The role depends on the nature of the change. They need to work on things like:

• Creating the vision for where you’re going
• What are the risks associated with the change being made?
• Working on the communication plan

So, when you get to the technical focus of the implementation, focus teams should be focusing on those areas as the subject matter experts to those technical topics. That way, they can develop the processes, tools, procedures, and things to use so that the leadership team can look at and approve them concerning the future model.

How often should the team meet?

That depends on what phase of the implementation you’re in. There’s a lot of work that leadership does early. That’s to prepare for the rest of the organization, like the focus teams and implementation. These may be two-hour sessions, while others may turn out to full working sessions, upwards of six hours long, to get the task sorted.

Reliability implementation has a master plan that serves as a to-do list for each of the focus teams. So, they work on getting through those focus team items knowing what they’re going to do and spending more time in the early stages addressing them. As the focus teams pick up and start doing more work, their involvement drops off significantly.

And just as situational leadership applies to the focus team leader and focus teams, it also applies to the leadership team. In the beginning, everyone’s excited because it’s something new. However, the longer it takes, people will go through the valley of despair, whereby the longest meetings often occur. So, you have to balance keeping everyone actively engaged while keeping up positivity even during the long hauls.

How do we manage competing interests in the Steering Committee?

That also depends on the situation and what you’re dealing with, with each focus team. So, the important thing is to ensure:

• Have a clear vision
• Bounce every position off of the main vision

Keep in mind that members of the steering committee can disagree with the leadership team, but you need to leave the room as a united front to help the organization at the end of the day.

How do you get the right people on the Steering Committee?

For starters, you need everyone that’s going to be involved in the implementation. Some will be less involved than others, but diversity is critical and will help in the long-term. Those with less involvement don’t need to attend all meetings, especially when their input isn’t necessary.

You should also bring in the informal leaders within the organization to offer their input.

How long does a Steering Committee last?

The committee will be there until the project ends, however long that takes. It would help if you kept in mind that the bulk of their workload varies based on the project’s progress.

What makes a Steering Committee successful?

Having communication that’s clear and aligned goes a long way. It would help if you took the time to practice communicating together before communicating with the organization. That way, regardless of who poses a question to you, the message they convey is the same philosophy as with other leadership members. A change initiative requires leaders to say they don’t have an answer whenever they’re not sure. That way, they can talk to the rest of the leadership team to get the right answer on the way forward.

In summary

Regarding maintenance and reliability or an asset management implementation, you need to ensure you’re modeling proactive behavior. You cannot be telling people to plan, yet you have a knee-jerk reaction to situations. So, sit down with your peers on the leadership team and list everything that could go wrong and mess up the implementation. A risk exercise helps everyone to address issues through a communication plan proactively.

Proper communication starts with knowing the reactive things you’re likely to face so that you can proactively plan to address them and model the behavior of productivity.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic’s LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Shon Isenhour Links:

• Shon Isenhour LinkedIn
• Shon Isenhour Twitter
• Eruditio.com
• Eruditio Linkedin
• Past Shon Isenhour Episodes
• Book: Leading Change
• Book: Change Management: The People Side of Change
• Book: ADKAR
• Leading Reliability Conference
• Marcon 2021

245 – The Role of Steering Committees in an M&R Implementation with Shon IsenhourJames Kovacevic

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