Initiate Governance Insights in One Sentence

Governance is like steer-wheel (governance is "steer" in Greece), to ensure enterprise running in the right direction, and well head to the destination.

From Wikipedia: Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process or part of decision-making or leadership processes.


1 Governance System - Listen to people involved, identify suspected key indicators, measure, attempt improvement, track, analyze, learn, and repeat.

2 A governance system ensures individual decisions and behaviors comply with collective values and objectives.

3 Governance is like steer-wheel (governance is "steer" in Greece), to ensure enterprise running in the right direction, and well head to the destination.

4 Governance is to establish a consensus of what is normal for your organization. Manage exceptions as they arise. Update your consensus of normal as the organization changes. Everything else is the detail.

5 Governance System defines how decisions are made: when, by whom, and how. A short definition but implies a lot... many times governance fails is because the wrong people were making decisions in the wrong way.

6 Corporate governance is not only about governing operations and tactical efforts. It is or should be equally about governing the evolution of the company. Otherwise the company, no matter how good the governance is, will fail because of a lack of vision and strategic direction.

7 Governance System is an activity that is hierarchically defined by a purpose, and it pilots a hierarchy of other activities up to the process.

8 Four key dimensions of corporate governance are accountability, strategy, policy, and monitoring - understand accountabilities of the environment - regulatory, shareholder, etc; develop business strategy, develop business policies offering further constraint/guidance to the implementation of strategy, monitor performance and implementation of the strategy, manage risks across all domains of interest.

9 A Governance system:
Plan. Always be aware of what needs to change.
Do. Execute well.
Check. Evaluate if we're still on target.
Act. Make necessary course corrections along the way.
Repeat!     

Posted in: CIO Debate,GRC