As a professional change manager and consultant, I get asked to advise on how to bring about cultural change in organisations. Often, part of the conversation goes something like this:
“We really need to change how we do things. We just don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done.”
“Yes, I can see that that would be a problem. I’m sure that there is a better way. It sounds like you need to delegate more. How comfortable are you with delegating to your managers?”
“That would be fine. But the problem is, our staff don’t have enough time for everything they need to do now either.”
“Hmm. You need a change programme – which you will need time and energy to lead – but you don’t have any spare capacity, and there is nowhere you can delegate stuff to free up some. So what parts of what you do now are you willing to see not being done at all to make the change happen?”
That often produces blank looks. But you have to devote time to leading change if you want it to succeed. You also have to lead by example. You have to demonstrate that change is a sufficiently high priority for you that it displaces other things. Other people are unlikely to change what they do until they see you changing what you spend time on, not just talking about doing so.
Change needs time
Think of it like a sliding-tile puzzle. In a 4 x 4 puzzle there are 15 tiles, so that there is always one space to move the next tile into. That gives enough flexibility to rearrange all the tiles into the right pattern. If there were 16 tiles – completely filling the frame – nothing could move at all. You have to find an empty space in your time, like the missing tile, to be able to rearrange your organisational tiles. Like many things in life, this is just about priorities. If change is high enough up your priority list, it will displace other activities to create the necessary space. If it isn’t, it is best not to start. This seasonal message will help you to remember!
So, seven articles later, where does that leave us? We have talked about 15 principles for designing your internal governance, and I have listed them all together for you below for convenience. However, I do want to re-emphasise one thing I said at the beginning:
“What good governance is NOT about is bureaucracy, box-ticking and delays. It requires finding balances – between control and practical delivery; between the risks of delegation and the cost of control; between wide ownership of decisions and strong accountability for them; between a simple structure and efficient decision-making; between minimum overhead and an effective audit trail – which provide the optimum basis for success. Every organisation has different arrangements because the optimum trade-offs depend on the context.”
The principles for internal governance are just the things you should have in mind when you design your system. That does not mean that the result has to be complicated. It should be ONLY as complicated as you need it to be in your particular circumstances. If you are a large public sector organisation, it may be necessary to be at the high-control end of the spectrum. If you are a small development company, you probably need something much lighter-weight and more flexible – but that is not a reason for not thinking about it. Some principles are good-practice rules which are likely to apply everywhere. Others are choices you need to make. The important thing is that the choices you make should be deliberate, and should be consistent. By deciding exactly what principles for internal governance you are going to work to before you start, you give yourself the best chance of success.
15 Principles for Internal Governance
- Authority and accountability must go together.
- No-one will have authority to ‘mark their own homework’ (i.e. conflicts of interest will be avoided).
- Collective and Individual Authority are different. What will their respective roles and interfaces be in the structure you will create?
- The governance structure should be strictly hierarchical. All bodies which have Collective Authority must have a place within that hierarchy.
- Individual Authority is delegated through the line management arrangements, but it forms part of the overall governance structure and must join up seamlessly with the rest of it.
- The design should start by establishing those areas where the Board should make delegations (starting by noting the matters already reserved to the Board), and how they should be grouped.
- What (if any) dual-key approval arrangements are desirable?
- The authority grid should include qualitative as well as quantitative delegation limits, and should not be restricted to areas where a financial limit can be set.
- Escalation levels will be set to provide an appropriate volume of requirements to escalate, decided on the basis of business need and practical delivery.
- Decisions about committee membership should be made in the light of the delegation levels set, not the other way round.
- The list of staff (or roles) to be included as members of the Collective Authority bodies will balance the need for ownership of decisions with minimum meeting membership.
- Clear rules for meeting attendance will be agreed and maintained.
- What formal documentation (e.g. Terms of Reference, Letters of Appointment) will be mandated?
- In what circumstances will formal authorisation and/or acceptance of documentation be mandated?
- How widely will the arrangements be communicated?
- The Midas Touch - what is Governance for?
- The Midas Touch again - Starting to build Internal Governance
- The Midas Touch again - Authority and Accountability in Internal Governance
- How many ways can you design a tree? - Hierarchy in Internal Governance
- Snakes and Ladders - Delegation and Escalation in Internal Governance
- Why are YOU here? Choosing members of Internal Governance Meetings
- What's in a word? Documentation for Governance
I’ve just been asked by some consultants I’m working with to give feedback for their annual appraisals. As usual there is a standard set of questions they need addressed – and one of them is about leadership. That seems a tough ask for someone junior who has only started recently, and set me thinking about how I could help them. Here’s what I said.
Leadership is different for every individual. Everyone has their own personality, and so everyone has to do it in their own way. Why? It’s very simple.
Leadership means that people are willing to follow you, and for that to happen, two things are necessary: people must trust you, and you must have something to say.
Trust comes when you behave with integrity. Everything you do is consistent, both with your values and with your personality, so people have confidence about outcomes. You are ‘authentic’. Everyone has their own personality, so everyone’s leadership is different. If you try to lead the way someone else does, you are inevitably trying to be consistent with their personality and not with your own. Even if you can do it, you will feel uncomfortable. You will come over as not authentic, and you won’t be fully trusted. As Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken!”
Leadership is for everyone
Everyone has something to say. We all have unique experiences starting from our earliest days, and it is human nature to use the stories of our past experiences to help us decide how to deal with new situations. Everyone has insights they can contribute, although of course the more experience you have the more you have to offer. If everyone can do these two things, leadership is not just for Leaders with a capital L. Leadership is about having the confidence to be yourself, and to share whatever your experience tells you about the situation you are in. Followers will follow!
I have recently moved house. I moved from a small and very ordinary town in Oxfordshire to a bustling area of London. What a contrast! From largely white to multi-cultural, from sleepy to vibrant, from staid dormitory to entrepreneurial.
One of the big differences is shopping. In Oxfordshire, there was little choice but to buy all your groceries from one of the big supermarkets. When I first lived there, there were many butchers, greengrocers and bakers. Over the years they have all shut up shop, unable to compete with the demand for the convenience of "all I need under one roof" and "open when I get home from work", even if supermarket prices can be high. Here I am spoilt for choice, especially with butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers. What a delight to be able to wander up and down the stalls, with the noise of vendors shouting out offers, with the bright colours of peppers, tomatoes, oranges and lemons and the indefinable smells, looking for the freshest, the fattest, and (wishfully) the tastiest.
The right price
One thing though took me by surprise. The price of bananas. Most of the market fruit and vegetables are good value by comparison with the supermarkets. But bananas? I’d guess the market price is about double the price in supermarkets! What is the right price? What is going on? The big chains compete with each other, not with market traders. If one shop puts a price down, the others pretty much follow suit. If one decides that bananas are to be a loss-leader, probably the rest do too. And this sort of pricing is like a ratchet – if it becomes established, it is very hard to move it in the other direction. The supermarkets may paint themselves into a corner. Pricing matters – and not just because companies exist to make a profit. Price sends a signal about what something is worth. “You get what you pay for” as the saying goes. Paradoxically, you may get more people coming to an event for which they have to buy a ticket than will come to one that is free, because the free event is not valued. Needing an income, I once took a job which paid considerably less than I had previously been earning. Result? I got very bored because no-one thought to use my higher skills. I was pigeon-holed by my price, and I left as soon as I could. Pricing that does not match value may serve a necessary short term purpose, but in the end it serves no-one very well. The right price matters.
Oxford is a city that is full of tourists, and in the UK where there are tourists, there are brown signs to direct them to the attractions. As well as the name of the attraction, a sign often also has what might best be called (by analogy with IT) an icon. The sign in the picture shows the word ‘Sheldonian' and a mask – the icon for a theatre. As you might guess, it directs you to the Sheldonian Theatre. So far so good.
There is just one problem. The theatre in question is not a place where you go to see plays. It is in fact the main ceremonial building of the university, where amongst other things, students are admitted, and all being well, later receive their degrees. I don’t suppose it confuses proud parents attending the ceremony, but I wonder what less well-informed tourists make of it?