For an investment committee to do its job properly, it needs to function smoothly. Bob Collie, chief research strategist for Russell Investment’s Americas Institutional business, offers some tips on holding an effective investment committee meeting.
To get an idea of what it takes to hold an effective committee meeting, Collie polled colleagues with decades of experience working with hundreds of investment committees. He identified three common themes: consider the committee’s focus, how it operates and how effective it is.
Collie put together 10 questions committee members can ask to evaluate how effective their committee meetings are — and, in the process, gain insight into how well they are doing their job as a committee.
1. How much work gets done before the meeting is held?
2. Is it always clear why a particular item is on the meeting agenda?
3. Are meetings ever sidetracked or hijacked?
4. Is the committee’s motivation arriving at the best outcome for a plan, or is it content to simply fulfill what the law requires?
5. How much time does the committee spend doing things that would be better done by others?
6. How/how well does the committee work together?
7. Are the meeting minutes useful?
8. Does the committee fix whatever is not working?
9. Does the committee ever take stock of its work and how well it is functioning?
10. Does the committee have a clear idea of what constitutes success?
