Life & Wisdom Quote by Norman Ralph Augustine

A perfect committee is an empty room, because the moment you add people you add friction: ego, turf, calendar conflicts, and the slow conversion of responsibility into procedure. Norman Ralph Augustine isn’t just cracking a managerial one-liner; he’s skewering a modern institution that treats group process as a moral good. The joke lands because it reverses a workplace piety: that more stakeholders automatically means better decisions. Augustine’s line implies the opposite - that committees often exist less to solve problems than to distribute liability, launder risk, and produce the appearance of diligence.

The intent is surgical. By calling the “optimum” committee memberless, he frames committee-making as an optimization problem where the key variable is not expertise but drag. Committees can be valuable for legitimacy and diverse input, but Augustine is pointing at the default setting: convene a group when you don’t want a single accountable decider. In that light, the committee becomes a technology of delay, not deliberation.

The subtext is also about incentives. Individuals are rewarded for avoiding mistakes more than for making bold calls, so decision-making migrates toward structures that protect careers. A committee can’t be fired; it can only “recommend.” The line’s austerity is its rhetorical power: it’s short, absolute, a little cruel. It doesn’t argue; it mocks. And mockery is often the only language bureaucracy understands.

Context matters: Augustine’s career in big engineering and defense-adjacent worlds (where schedule slips and cost overruns are existential) gives the quip bite. When time and accountability are real, endless coordination stops being “collaboration” and starts being failure with minutes attached.