Project governance doesn’t require permanent presence…

Steering Jour Fixe. Cover — Steering Jour Fixe 6

…It requires structure with accountable participants and measurable outcomes

Three cases – Any of that sound familiar as well?

Steering Jour Fixe

1. “We hired well. The reports look confident. The work does not arrive.“

The new project leadsounded right in the interviews. Onboarding went smoothly. Weekly updates are detailed, articulate, and arrive on time. But when we look at what has actually moved, three weeks in, it is hard to point at concrete progress. Decisions are “in preparation.” Documents are “being finalised.” The system tasks that should have been done are still open in the backlog. Asking directly feels unfair — they are new, motivated, and visibly working. But Finance is waiting, the milestone is approaching, and the gap between reported confidence and operational output keeps growing.

A Jour Fixe brings a weekly forcing function. Each session must produce one decision, one cleared blocker, or one clarified responsibility — and the consultant cannot deliver the block otherwise. “On track” is not an answer; “this is what shipped this week” is. The gap between reported confidence and actual output becomes visible within two cycles.

Steering Jour Fixe

2. “We’re stuck. Now.“

It’s not that we don’t know what to do. It’s that every path forward requires a call nobody wants to make. The team carries daily operations plus three half-started initiatives. Escalations come back with “let’s discuss next quarter.” Meanwhile the issue that triggered this is still open, still costing us, and still waiting for someone to decide.

A Jour Fixe runs on a decide-or-defer rule. Every week, the undecided either becomes decided in the room, or is explicitly deferred with a date and an owner. Nothing stays in limbo by accident. If there is no substantive topic on a given week, the session is cancelled and you do not pay for it — so the structure rewards real progress, not attendance.

Steering Jour Fixe

3. “The external system integrator is delivering — but to what standard?“

The SI invoice arrives on time. The tickets are closed. The status reports show green. But internally, the team flags issues that keep coming back — workarounds instead of fixes, configuration choices nobody documented, decisions made in side conversations between SI consultants without our team in the loop. We bought capacity, but we did not buy oversight. Now we need someone who can sit on our side of the table and steer the SI work the way we would steer our own — without becoming a second project manager on the payroll.

A Jour Fixe puts the same person on your side of the table every week, with no commercial interest in extending the SI engagement. Decisions are documented, scope drift gets named, and side-channel agreements between SI consultants surface in writing. The SI works against a counterpart who reads the same tickets, but reports to you.

The product

Steering Jour Fixe

All of this is the Jour Fixe.

Project governance does not require permanent presence. It requires structure, accountable participants, and measurable outcomes.

One remote session per week. One person who shows up prepared, asks the right questions, ensures follow-through, and leaves. Teams of three to twenty, variable engagement length — four months recommended. We take what is there. Prepare it. Structure it. Then accelerate.

Steering Jour Fixe

This is for you if…

Situation One: Your team has tried one or two people in a steering role already, and it did not hold. Maybe they were too close to the team. Maybe they lacked the mandate. Maybe they became part of the dynamic they were brought in to change. You may already know who is blocking progress — but you have not been able to address it. What is missing is not another person in the room. What is missing is a structure that forces the question.

Situation Two: Someone in your leadership is temporarily absent — illness, parental leave, role transition. The team needs a bridge that holds without replacing the person who is gone. Not a stand-in. A scaffold. Visible weekly, invisible in between. Gone when the person returns.

Situation Three: The project runs, people are busy, but nothing moves forward. Decisions accumulate undecided. Blockers have names, but the names do not get spoken in the right room. You do not need more effort from the team. You need a weekly forcing function — one session where the undecided becomes decided, or is explicitly deferred with a date.

Prerequisite: you have the authority to give someone a mandate. Without that, the format does not work.