The benefits and challenges of drafting by committee

I think it is no small secret that universities love a committee. Whether you call them committees, working groups, task forces, advisory groups, steering committees, or something else entirely, it would not surprise me to learn that your university has these in abundance. If there’s a problem, there’s probably a committee being formed to find the solution.

But I jest. Committees (advisory groups, task forces, etc.) are an integral component of collegial governance. And in many ways, there are indisputable benefits to having a cross-institutional committee weigh in on policy decisions that have broad campus impacts.

Benefits such as:

• Breadth of expertise: Universities are awash with subject matter experts and their expertise can help ground the policy in the context of the university’s campus culture and history.
• Cross-divisional representation: Including representation across different divisions of the university helps create well-rounded and inclusive policies and ensures relevant application in all areas.
• Proactive stakeholder consultation: Early input from relevant stakeholders can speed up the policy approval process by identifying and addressing issues right away.
• Improved uptake: When more people have been involved in the policy process it creates a sense of shared ownership which can lead to better buy-in and uptake during the operationalization of the policy.

However, the question at the heart of this blog post is: Is drafting by committee the most effective strategy for policy writing? And I’m not so sure that it is. While we want to ensure we are capitalizing on the wealth of expertise available on campus and gathering the relevant people in the room, we also run the risk of the proverbial “too many cooks in the kitchen.” And when we have too many cooks in the kitchen, we can end up with a policy that includes everything and the kitchen sink.

Drafting by committee can lose sight of the overall objective.

The challenge with drafting by committee is that we can quickly lose sight of the overall objective as everyone starts getting into the weeds about what the policy needs to say and how it needs to be said. People come to the table with their own personal objectives of what they believe the policy needs to cover, and if they successfully convince the rest of the committee to include each of those objectives or pieces of information, we can quickly end up with a policy draft that is unwieldy.

Drafting by committee can cause logistical challenges.

Challenges such as coordinating meetings, keeping people on task, waiting for each committee member to weigh in on decisions, coming to consensus with there are differing opinions and perspectives, time spent wordsmithing the language so that we can land on a message that's not only precisely accurate, but accurately precise while also artfully exact, with every word pulling its semantic weight. Or at least that’s what the linguists in the room tell me.

So how and when can we use committees in our policy process?

My personal preference is to capitalize on existing committees as part of an early consultation process. As we covered at the start of this blog, it is highly likely that you already have a plethora of committees at your disposal. There is likely one, if not two or three or four, committees scattered across campus that include relevant subject matter expertise and cross-institutional representation that you could utilize to help inform the policy without actually asking them to write it. Why ask people to form and join yet another committee when you can simply go to them? Instead, consider:

• Take the existing policy (or the plan for a new policy) to the committee and ask the committee members to identify their top one to two pain points with the policy.
• Take that information away, and use it to help inform the new draft.
• Bring the new draft back to the committee for feedback.

The key to this process is to let the committee know they are not “the owners” of the policy, you are there seeking their feedback and expertise, but that ultimately the policy drafter is making the final decision on the scope, content and language of the policy.

This process can be repeated with however many relevant committees or groups exist on campus relative to the topic of the policy being drafted or revised. Utilizing existing committees in this way helps reap the benefits, while sidestepping the challenges.

Whether you always write policy by committee, never write policy by committee or occasionally find yourself writing policy by committee, this blog post has hopefully sparked some reflection on the value and pitfalls of drafting by committee.

The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the association or post-secondary institution. The author does not receive any financial incentive for purchases made through the links included in this post.

Seeking Specialized Skills

I often identify myself as a keen continuous learner, and when I start to feel stuck or bored, I tend to look for learning opportunities or new hobbies. When I wrote What’s in your Policy Closet earlier this year, I was at a point in my career where I wanted and needed more professionally. In December 2022, that stuck feeling led to seeking out professional development opportunities and resources that could help expand my skillset and reignite the passion I had for my job, while preparing to request a reclassification. I had previously attempted to seek out policy-specific learning opportunities, but quickly realized those types of experiences were few and far between.

Reigniting Professional Passions

In more recent searches for relevant materials and webinars, I somehow stumbled upon an international bestselling book by Perfect Policies founder Lewis S. Eisen titled Rules: A Guide to Drafting Respectful Policies and Directives. The book arrived during the first week of January, and was a good reminder that policies need to be drafted with clarity and respect, while assuming positive intent from those who fall under them, as well as the importance of avoiding the parent-child dynamic in policy writing. While reading, I thought to myself, “he gets it,” and felt reassured that I was developing policies in a good way.

Inspired by Lewis’ writing, I found myself scouring the internet for other materials, opinion pieces, articles, and learning opportunities that he offered. In an opinion piece published in 2021, he wrote “ Drafting policies and directives is not rocket science, but it does require specific knowledge and skills that must be deliberately acquired,” and that really resonated with me because it wasn’t until I discovered ACUPA that I was able to connect with other policy professionals and could tap into policy-specific learning opportunities.

Having connected with Lewis via LinkedIn, I learned that he had developed a virtual workshop on Advanced Policy Drafting Techniques, and having recently had the pleasure of attending that workshop, I wanted to share a few key takeaways from those sessions, such as values-based policy drafting, a quick way to ensure respectful wording, and the place for plain language. I have also provided other resources that I have found helpful throughout my policy career.

Virtual Learning

One of my favorite things about attending any professional development opportunity is the broad experience that participants bring to the classroom, especially in virtual settings where contributors are often distributed across the globe. Policy-specific professional development opportunities almost always have to be very deliberately sought out, which means that going into any learning opportunities, I know I am going to be surrounded by other keen policy professionals at different stages in their careers and from different employment settings. I’ve had wonderful discussions with people from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, just to name a few, who have held positions in academia, non-profit, government, and other employment settings. Discussions with fellow attendees and course instructors, as well as meetings with ACUPA members, always leave me feeling inspired and ready to get back to work. I would encourage anyone feeling stuck to spend some time expanding their professional community and learning from people with different perspectives and worldviews.

Values-Based Policy Drafting

Regardless of your geographic location and work environment, the establishment where you work likely has a mission statement, values, and goals. When drafting a policy, it is important to have your institution’s values in mind and be able to tie the policy to those values. Although this may seem like common sense and is something I have in the back of my mind, I realized when it was being presented by Lewis that I do not deliberately consider how a policy relates to the values of my place of employment during the proposal or drafting stages. I draft with clarity and respect, try to assume positive intent from all employees, and avoid the parent-child dynamic as best I can, but there is so much more to the policy cycle, a lot of which requires buy-in and collaboration.

Positive Positioning

When people hear policy, they usually think of rules, and immediately want to push back because they don’t want to be told what to do. As the authority drafting or revising the policy, it is important to know how that policy, or changes to it, could impact the values of an institution. Connecting a new policy, or changes to an old policy, to the company or institution’s values helps with optics, and more importantly, helps to gain buy-in from others, especially from senior leadership and potential collaborators. In being able to state, “this policy aligns or supports values X, Y, and Z, by . . .” and “this policy will achieve X, Y, and Z, by . . .” the policy itself, or revisions, become attached to goals rather than rules, and are automatically viewed in a more positive light. Illustrating how someone or something specific fits into a policy or strategic document, and how it can benefit them, is an important part of the consultation process.

Re-Introducing Respect

Lewis’ book and workshops focus on the importance of clarity, conciseness, and respectful wording, which means removing the underlying assumption of a parent-child dynamic from policies. We first learn about rules as children, and those rules are set by adults. What we took away from that experience is that all rules need to sound like that, but policies are written by adults and for adults, so they need to be written in a way that makes others want to adhere to them. This means employing an approachable tone and removing words like must, may (a blunted must unless representing a possibility), many, and should (which represents a recommendation rather than a rule) from your policy vocabulary. Simply removing these terms will change the tone of your policy from condescending to respectful, and sets rules that people are more willing to follow.

Make it a Manual

How often do you find yourself thinking or saying, “no one is reading/following this policy?” Another significant takeaway related to language and terminology from Lewis’ workshop was the idea of who needs to read and understand the policies we write. The short answer is relevant policy professionals, specialists, and those with authority over the policy. As policy professionals, many of us have adapted to using plain language, but have you ever considered that by using plain language in policy, your directive may become murky or lost completely? Policies are, after all, for use by specialists (like us), and those with authority over them. This means that policies can and should often contain jargon and technical terms because they are necessary for clarity. Non-experts, on the other hand, require good guidance documents. Lewis suggests thinking of the guidance documents as a pamphlet; an office or unit-specific manual for employees to reference that tells them everything they need to know, with hyperlinks to other relevant documents. Although these additional guidance documents take time to develop, I would argue that they are a valuable resource that could lead to increased awareness and compliance within offices.

Never Stop Networking

If you’re feeling stuck, losing your passion for policy, or are seeking more from your career, I highly recommend attending events and professional development opportunities. A great place to gain new policy knowledge is through expanding your network by connecting with ACUPA colleagues and becoming more involved with the association by joining a committee, attending the annual conference, and taking advantage of the many continuous learning opportunities available to you. 

Another way to expand your skills and participate in sessions with like-minded policy professionals is by searching regularly for experiences available through Eventbrite. This is a great way to find hidden gems! Earlier this month, I participated in an interactive session on policy change. The workshop was marketed as “a fun and quirky journey through the science of policy change - with pop culture references to really nerd out together,” and it was such a unique, fun way to learn and discuss policy concepts with individuals from across the world. It also provided me with new LinkedIn connections and relevant examples that I can use to discuss policy with my colleagues who don’t necessarily understand what I do and why policy is important.

Along with attending and participating in opportunities available via Eventbrite, I have also recently discovered a site called Apolitical that has some great resources. Though geared towards government and public servants, the policymaking learning opportunities available through Apolitical, such as free and for-fee courses, articles, and events, are valuable regardless of the setting you work in and where you are in your career as a policy professional.

Educational Opportunities Recommended by Sara:

Drafting Policies for Maximum Engagement (available for a fee, next offered in February 2024)

An Introduction to Policymaking (online, free)

Stakeholder Engagement 101 (online, free)

Silo-Busting for Public Servants (online, free)

Certificate in Policy Development and Implementation (online, available for a fee)

Eventbrite (online, free/available for a fee)

Additional Resources Suggested by Sara:

Rules: A Guide to Drafting Respectful Policies and Directives

How to Write Effective Policies and Procedures: The System that Makes the Process of Developing Policies and Procedures Easy

Become A Procedures Pro: The Admin's Guide to Developing Effective Office Systems and Procedures

Articles by Lewis S. Eisen

Ten Benefits of the Perfect Policies™ Approach

5 Obstacles to Policy Approval: How to Craft a Good, Approvable Policy

What Does Policy Actually Mean, Anyway?

Implementing a "Policy on Policies"

If you've been in the policy administration business for any length of time, you've likely heard about, considered, and/or implemented a "policy on policies" at your institution. For those of you who don't already publish such a policy, I thought I'd discuss why I believe that it's a valuable tool to have in place.

Policy development is an important function, but getting administrative buy-in and notice of the importance of consistent policy development and tracking is sometimes difficult. Having a "policy on policies" provides an agreed-upon process for developing, reviewing, and approving policies, and ensures better compliance with the rules, regulations, and agreements that govern the business of higher education.

Here are some things to consider when creating or updating a policy on policies at your institution:

• Applicability
• Equity Review
• Required Policy Review and Approval Steps
• Templates or Framework

I'm also providing brief descriptions below of how we've chosen to handle these considerations here at Washington State University (WSU).

Applicability

Do you want a policy on policies that applies to all or only some policies?

At WSU, as with many public research universities, we have many types of institution-wide policy publications in place -- administrative policy manuals, academic policies and procedures, personnel manuals, research-related manuals, and our Washington Administrative Code (WAC) regulations.

When we first published an executive policy on policies, our administration decided to apply it to all policies except academic and single-unit or single-campus policies and procedures. The policy at that time outlined a draft/review/approval process that all policy publication departments were required to follow. Our policy on policies was revised recently to apply only to policies intended for publication in the four administrative policy manuals and the WAC regulations, which are managed by my office.

Equity Review

Do you want to include an equity review requirement in your policy on policies?

Our administration, including academic leadership, recently approved an equity review process, which includes an equity lens tool. My office agreed to publish the equity lens tool from our new Policy Development website, and to include discussion of the required process in the policy on policies.

Equity lens review includes review and approval both during the policy discussion phase and during the formal drafting and review phase of policy development.

And in the interest of increasing transparency and WSU community input, our Policy Development website includes descriptions of administrative policies under development and copies of drafts of the policies under review. (Copies of administrative policy drafts are available to WSU members only.) Copies of proposed WAC amendments continue to be published through the Washington State Register (WSR), and our Proposed WACs website links to the WSR proposals and public hearing information.

Required Policy Review and Approval Steps

Do you want to include specific actions for policy developers to complete when requesting new or revised policies, or removing policies? Do you want to have separate processes for major revisions and minor revisions?

In order to ensure that steps such as conducting the equity review, involving my office (for preparation and process oversight), and obtaining approvals from necessary administrators are completed, we decided to include step-by-step process instructions in our updated policy on policies. Our administration agreed to allow an abbreviated approval process for minor revisions.

Our policy on policies also includes periodic review requirements. For the most part it was decided to make the applicable administrative departments responsible for periodic review, as my office has a very limited staff (just two of us).

Template or Framework

Do you want your policy developers to use a template, or will you provide a policy framework to them for reference?

As I wrote in a previous blog a year or so back, we had for many years not required templates for policy development, but instead provided framework recommendations upon request. However, our compliance administration decided to implement a template for our executive policies and a template for our business and safety policies and procedures. (Links to these policy templates are available from our Policy Development website In the interest of moving forward with the updated policy on policies requirements as soon as possible, we have not applied the templates to our existing policies, but plan to restructure our policies as revisions occur. (Again, this is mainly due to staffing limitations and workload.)

In conclusion, if you haven't already implemented a "policy on policies," I highly recommend doing so. Having one in place greatly assists both policy developers and members of the policy administration office, by providing readily-accessible guidance and structure.

Note to ACUPA Members

Be sure to look at the ACUPA Templates and Other Tools webpage for samples to use to guide policy development, revision, review, and removal. These templates, guides, and tools have been developed from samples provided by policy administrators at multiple institutions and can be invaluable resources.

Can a policy management system track as well as I can?

The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of ACUPA or Purdue University.

I track a fair amount of data with each of the policies in the Purdue University policy library. Currently, I use Excel to manually track all my data. Even to me, this seems a bit archaic with the variety of policy management systems out there. I have looked at a couple vendors, but have stopped short of pursuing a contract because I am afraid I won’t be able to capture all my data.

Some data are pretty standard, such as the date of issue, the responsible executive, the responsible office, and the volume and chapter (see my post from October 2020 on Organizing a Policy Catalog to learn more about the last two). It’s easy to designate a field that captures these data. It is also easy to track the date a policy was last revised. Even systems that are not designed exclusively for policy management can track version dates.

Where I run into trouble is finding a way to automatically track the last date a policy was reviewed. Policies get revised all the time. Titles, phone numbers, and email addresses change frequently, which require an update to the affected policy, and thus, a new version date. Most of the time, however, these small administrative updates do not coincide with a comprehensive review of the policy. If I were to use the version date to determine when a policy is due for review, I would likely have a lot of policies that never get reviewed because the version date never falls outside the review period (which, at Purdue, is every five years).

I also get tripped up when a policy supersedes another policy. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as the title of the policy changing, two policies being combined into one or vice versa, old memos being updated into policies, etc. With my Excel spreadsheet, I am able to track a current policy all the way back to its origin, even if that is a memo from 1952. I can tell you the name and number of the policy or memo that addressed a given subject on a given date, and I can find a copy of that document in our e-archives. I have not had to track anything back to 1952, but I have had instances when our legal counsel needed all the versions of a policy going back several years. I just don’t see how a system could track this kind of serpentine information.

Last, but not least, we allow for interim policies. This means a policy can go into effect without having gone through all the required steps. The policy owner then has six months to finish all the steps and finalize the policy, or request an extension of the interim status. I mark policies as interim and track the six-month deadline in Excel. It seems to me that I would have to continue to track this sort of thing manually even if I had a policy management system.

Maybe I am making things too complicated. Maybe I need to let something go. What do you think?

Make sure your policy library has only what it needs

Organizations develop policies and procedures to guide operations and behavior.  Policies direct organizations on what needs to be done and how.  But how do we decide what policies are necessary?  As policy administrators, we are asked to write or implement a policy, and it is our responsibility to confirm that the policy accomplishes something, and that a policy is the best way to achieve success.  Organizations implement policies to avoid difficult conversations, to course-correct challenging groups, or to resolve an isolated incident that may never occur again. To avoid publishing an unnecessary policy, first, ask yourself if the issue is essential and if it needs clarification.

The importance is subjective.  As policy administrators, we must help our colleagues identify the need for a policy and procedure and determine how to include the important and most practical information for users.  We want to avoid issuing policies merely to replace difficult conversations.  For example, if a campus department wants to eliminate hard copy invoices, do we need a policy, or can we accomplish this goal with a conversation?

Complex issues need clarification.  Is your organization subject to new legislation?  We cannot expect every person in our organization to research and comprehend the law.  Policies are a mechanism to interpret, shorten, and add the “why” and “how” tailored to the organization.

Certain issues have a major impact on the readers and the organization. Personnel, financial, health, and safety are common policy topics and are easily identified as necessary policies.  However, the remaining potential policies should inform readers with clear communication

Creating policies for all topics results in overload, and people will ignore them.  Never write/implement a policy “just to have one” or “because it seems like a good idea.”  Align the policy with the strategic objectives of the organization.  Ensure the policy accomplishes something, and it will be read.  Keep the policy concise.