What 15 years of writing has taught me about approval by committee

Approval by committee has killed more good copy than every bad writer in history combined. And the tragedy is that it’s done with the best of intentions, by clever people, one entirely reasonable comment at a time.

I’ve been writing for brands for fifteen years. A long tail of businesses you’d recognise and a longer one you wouldn’t. In that time I’ve delivered a line I was proud of into a room, watched six sensible people each make one small, defensible improvement to it, and watched it walk out the other side with a limp. Nobody in that room wanted to make it worse. But every single one of them did.

This isn’t a piece about precious writers and their darlings. Some darlings deserve to die. This is about a specific, predictable, expensive failure mode — and, because I suspect you’re often the one holding the pen at the end, how to stop your own sign-off process from quietly sanding the edges off everything that made the work sing in the first place.

Why committees converge on beige

Here’s the mechanism, because it helps to see it working:

A distinctive headline or sentence has a point of view. A point of view, by definition, is a position some people won’t share. So when a bold sentence lands in front of eight stakeholders, roughly two love it, four are neutral, and two have a small, specific reservation. Legal isn’t sure about the claim. Someone in product thinks it undersells the feature. And so on.

Every one of those notes is legitimate. And the path of least resistance (the nice thing to do, the collaborative thing) is to accommodate them all. We’ve all been there when finding a compromise feels like a victory, but you be sure the writer is grinding their teeth when that’s happening.

Consensus doesn’t find the best line. It finds the least objectionable one.

The word “fine” is where copy goes to die, and committees are extremely good at manufacturing fine.

The feedback that isn’t feedback

Some notes identify a genuine problem: this claim isn’t substantiated, this doesn’t sound like us, this contradicts the campaign. Gold. Act on it. That’s the committee doing its actual job.

Then there’s the note that’s really just a preference in a trench coat. I’d have said it differently. Not sure about “sprint.” Can we try a few more options? This one wears the costume of feedback but carries no information. It tells you how one person would have written the line, which is not the same as telling you what’s wrong with it – and the honest answer to “I’d have said it differently” is usually “yes, and you didn’t have to, because that’s what you hired me for.”

The skill isn’t in collecting feedback. The skill is in triaging it – separating the note that fixes a fault from the note that merely swaps one person’s taste for another’s. A good process protects the second kind of note from ever reaching the copy, because that note doesn’t improve the work. It just averages it.

How to run sign-off without flattening the thing you paid for

So here’s the useful part. If you commission or approve creative work, a handful of decisions on your side of the table will do more for the output than any brief you write.

Decide who actually has a vote, and tell them.

Not everyone cc’d is a decision-maker; some are courtesy copies who’ve mistaken visibility for authority. Be explicit about who approves, who advises, and who’s simply being kept in the loop. Three people with clear remits will sharpen a piece. Eleven people with equal standing will file the corners off it and call the result “polished.”

Ask for the problem, not the fix.

The most destructive three words in any review are “can we just…” When a stakeholder hands you a replacement sentence, you’ve lost the diagnosis and inherited their draft. Push everyone to describe what’s wrong and leave the solving to the person whose job is solving it. You’ll get a better fix and a faster one.

Protect the point of view on purpose.

Before the notes land, agree what this piece is for and what makes it distinctive – then treat that as load-bearing rather than negotiable. When a comment would neutralise the very thing that makes the work land, that’s not a tweak to wave through. That’s the moment to ask whether you’re improving the copy or just de-risking it into oblivion. Those feel identical from the inside, which is exactly why they need to be a conscious call.

Separate “wrong” from “not how I’d do it.”

Give your reviewers the same test I use on my own notes: is this a mistake, or a preference? Mistakes get fixed. Preferences get a hard second look, because a page can only survive so many, and every one spent on a preference is one you can’t spend on the reader.

Distinctive work has a parent. It can be argued for, stood behind, and – yes – occasionally got wrong in an interesting way that teaches you something. Average work is an orphan. You didn’t spend the budget to produce something no one in the building will put their name to.

The best thing you can do for the copy you’re paying for isn’t to improve it with a committee of non-writers.

It’s to know when to leave Britney alone.