The committee decides what. You decide how.

A technology committee took four months to approve a tool I had already been using productively for four months.

That gap isn’t really about bureaucracy. Committees exist to answer “should we,” and that’s a real question worth real time when it touches a whole organization, its data, and its risk. The problem is that “should we” and “how do we” get treated as one conversation, when they’re not.

While the committee weighed policy, I was proving practice: running real use cases, learning what actually saved time versus what just looked impressive in a demo. I wasn’t waiting for permission to find out if the tool worked. I was building the playbook I’d need the moment permission arrived.

By the time the answer came back yes, I had a working playbook instead of a blank page. The rollout that followed wasn’t a pilot. It was already three months ahead of one.

This is the pattern I’ve come to trust: the committee owns the what. Somebody still has to own the how, on their own clock, before permission ever shows up. If you wait for the yes to start learning the tool, you’re not being cautious, you’re just starting the clock late.

I built the agency’s AI governance program and sat on the committee that runs this process now. I’ve seen both sides of that four-month gap, and I’d rather be the person who used the wait than the person who was stuck inside it.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.