7 Deadly Sins of Ineffective Governance

Good Governance takes planning, good agendas and skilled forward thinking Leaders who can contribute to the future direction of the Business.

We get to work with many Advisory Boards and Boards of Directors as we facilitate Strategy & support Strategy Execution & support business owners to either initiate, restructure or optimise their Governance. This requires us to facilitate meetings, sit on a number of Advisory Boards and I currently act as Chairman on one Board of Directors. Sadly I would have to generalise that Boards are, in the main, either ineffective or not as valuable as they could be. In fact one of the big opportunities that will ensure Business success I see is to successfully implement highly functional governance. Those that do have it in place have the opportunity to get the maximum return on their investment by taking it to the next level.

Here are what I call the 7 deadly sins of Ineffective Governance;

1. Undermining the CEO:
   Unknowingly they get in the way of their CEO by getting involved in the workplace, not supporting or trusting the CEO’s recommendations or initiatives. In fact many do not trust or have confidence in their CEO full stop and worse still do nothing to address it.
2. Discussing the “how” but never defining the “what”.
   Many Boards Spend most of their valuable discussion time dealing with management decisions ie How should this be done? Yet they never pose & define the big questions such as what are we building? Where are we taking this? What could and should we become as a Business?
3. Not understanding the sacred relationship between Chair and CEO.
   It is a special relationship and the most critical one. It is an employment relationship and one in which the Chair should coach, mentor, guide and support the CEO to succeed. This includes professional development and tough conversations around delivering outcomes. It involves building trust and confidence and aligning the Board to support their CEO.
4. Never altering the composition.
   The Board should regularly change or include leaders with the skills the company needs as it develops and grows. As the company grows and evolves so too should the BOD as they keep the CEO and Management ahead of the game.
5. Sweating the small stuff.
   Particularly prevalent in family businesses is the tendency to never get breakthroughs on the sacred cows. The same conversations, fears, egos repeat at every meeting. The elephants in the room are never addressed and therefore they never go away.
6. Focussing on the negative.
   It is very easy to see what is going wrong but never acknowledging what is going right. Negativity kills culture and creativity. Problems must be addressed but seeing the good stuff and encouraging more of it is a key role of any leader and Directors are leaders. Negative meetings that focus on what has not worked and never inspire what could be great are unfortunately common place.
7. Not defining success.
   Clever strategy, KPI’s & metrics must all be measured and success defined so the CEO knows he/she is on track and so that management measures can also be clarified. Too much time in Board meetings is dedicated to historical results ie they can’t be influenced. Whilst reviewing the results and banking lessons learnt is very important, so too knowing the business is on track for the future is arguably more important and productive. You can’t influence the past nor be inspired by it. The role of Governance is to take a business forward and to help Management to navigate the ambiguity of the market.

By getting the agenda right, tweaking the composition, by becoming future looking and building complete trust in the CEO, a BOD can very quickly make a massive impact on business performance in a very short timeframe. Sadly it is poorly done and this inspires mediocre results.

HOW IS YOUR GOVERNANCE? DO YOU HAVE ANY? HOW EFFECTIVE IS IT? WHAT COULD IT ACHIEVE FOR YOUR BIGGEST INVESTMENT?

 

This blog was written by Kendall Langston, Strategic Advisor at Advisory Works.

#governance, #leadership, #7deadlysins #strategicexecutionpartner

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The post 7 Deadly Sins of Ineffective Governance appeared first on Advisory Works - 12 Aug, 2018.