The executive committee is a subcommittee that sits under the board of directors. It is an organisation’s governing body, which oversees management, sets strategy and supervises its members. Members are elected by members or shareholders, and meet regularly to evaluate financial performance, make decisions about policies, and appoint the top managers. It is the governing body that ensures that proper governance procedures are adhered to.

Unlike the full board of directors Executive committees are typically smaller groups that have close ties through leadership that can gather quickly and at short notice to tackle major issues like urgent workplace issues as well as high-level strategic decision making or oversight of the organisation. They are typically responsible to ensure that board members know their roles and responsibilities. They also take the lead on delivering effective training in governance practices. They are also accountable for appointing new CEOs as well as conducting evaluations of their performance and reporting them to the board.

The executive committee is the steering wheel of the board. It decides what matters it should put first. It is crucial that the executive committee be completely transparent to the rest of the board on its decisions, and abides by the full board’s guidelines. It is recommended, to accomplish this, the executive committee should be a permanent committee of the board with a fixed time and formal timeframes. This allows anonymous the board to easily see what issues have been dealt with by the executive committee, and which require the attention of the entire board.