An earlier post on accountability concluded that ‘a pervasive reason why a decision-maker ought to explain and justify conduct is to engender the trust necessary to function effectively in the circumstances. Knowing why makes it possible to look at to whom one should be accountable, and for what conduct.’ That post was prompted by many experiences showing that the…
Coffee party
Just to confirm that all the coffee did actually culminate in a party, here is the evidence from the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law graduation held on 8 May 2019. Our Managing Director, now Dr Carolyn Evans CSC, received her degree from Chancellor David Gonski.
Thinking about ‘being accountable’
In the very broad church of governance and decision-making, ‘being accountable’ has long since become one of those expressions that is bandied about as the all-encompassing remedy for poor decisions, inappropriate actions, lacklustre results – not least, accountability is cast as a panacea to corporate performance ills and the solution to ‘undemocratic’ government. [1] But…
One last sabbatical postcard
In a step known as ‘administrative conferral’, yesterday our Managing Director, Carolyn Evans, was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of New South Wales, ahead of a later opportunity for graduation celebrations. Her doctoral thesis is entitled Towards a more accountable United Nations Security Council – why, to whom, for what,…
A few tears with your coffee
Today we are sniffling a little as we bid a very fond farewell to our long time colleague Tanya van der Wall. After 15 years with ThinkEvans, Tanya is leaving us for a full time role with Commercial Eyes, a specialist consultancy based in Melbourne and focussed on pharmaceuticals, life sciences and related business. As…
Governance is … what now?
In the FAQs grab bag for consultants and other advisers to organisations, the predictable inclusions are a bunch of things about ‘governance’ – what they think it is, what a good system looks like, why senior people should lose sleep over it, and the like. Unfortunately, all of the talk that goes into the top…
It’s not just you …
If you thought the last two years were just a bit odd, with everything blowing hot and cold on a seemingly random basis, it really isn’t just you. We may have come to expect that from climate-change induced weather, but political leaders in many places have been giving the weather a run for its money….
Women in Community: sunset or sunrise?
Client: Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, NSW Region This project responded to a felt need for a fresh look at a long-standing initiative of the Sisters, to answer the question of what options there may be for this initiative to continue to serve an evolving community. The project team has now reviewed…
All recommendations adopted
Client:Chief Executive Officer, ACPSEM ThinkEvans has now reported to the ACPSEM Board of Directors on a range of governance initiatives that, if implemented, will steer the organisation towards positive governance outcomes for the entire ACPSEM membership. The report put forward 32 headline recommendations for change, all of which were adopted by the ACPSEM Board. The…
Thinking about being ‘a little bit unique’
Not that we’re a bunch of grammar fanatics, but when we routinely get people quoting our reports for years afterwards (no, really – years and years!) it does rather focus the mind on trying to get the spelling and punctuation correct! So forgive us a little in-joke when we say how often we smile when…
Women in Community
Client: Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, NSW Region MacKillop House, located at Lyneham in the ACT, is a very long-running initiative of the Sisters which is now due for review. The project team from ThinkEvans plans to report to the Regional Leadership Team for NSW in November 2018.
Thinking about one of the ‘golden rules’ of governance
It’s a long way from done but it’s already been an interesting year – by which we mean “interesting” in the sense of the curse “may you live in interesting times”! Frankly, for our taste the last 12 or 18 months has been just a little bit too interesting! Looking back a bit further, though,…
Once more with feeling
Client: Hadrian Logistics Solutions Pty Ltd Harking back to the early career of our Technical Director, Glenn Evans, as an aeronautical engineer in the Royal Australian Air Force, he will be the lead contributor from ThinkEvans in this collaborative work with other former RAAF colleagues at Hadrian Logistics Solutions. The confidential project involves a significant…
Refreshing governance for professional standards
Client:Chief Executive Officer, ACPSEM ACPSEM is a well-established member-based association, operating nationally under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) as a not-for-profit public company limited by guarantee. After a revised Constitution was adopted by the membership in November 2015, the College has followed through to reconsider elements of its governance arrangements in relation to bylaws, standing…
Coffee time thought starters for getting back in the (board) saddle
With the Australia Day holiday nearly gone for another year, workplaces of Australia are leaving behind the summer break and getting back into gear for the year ahead. To start some thoughts on the governance task ahead for all our colleagues on boards and in senior exec teams, its our shout for the virtual coffee…
Down the microscope, briefly
In every organisation, there is a group to whom the organisation owes its existence. We often talk of the ‘owners’, since in a commercial organisation it is the owners, literally, who cause the enterprise to come into being and to have a particular purpose. But there is an equivalent group for every enterprise, commercial or…
Dissent v Consensus
Setting up for success really does start in the board room. Otherwise, chances are the entity will flounder at least, and founder at worst. More than that, a great board needs to be a great team. Achieving that is no mean feat and often calls for disagreement on complex issues – although, we hasten to…
Endless coffee is great – but endless time on planning, not so much
Balancing time allocated to board tasks is yet another challenge for the board that requires compromise – between enough attention to rightful detail, and tipping over into meddling in management, for example; or between devoting enough time to well-informed planning, and investing so much time that plans far outweigh results. For the board, governance and…
Getting to more than the sum of the parts
There are many organisations that have no legal obligation to follow this or that regime for corporate governance. But our question remains, why do it the hard way? Instead – after decades of high-profile corporate disasters – why not learn a lesson from the experience of others: it seems far better to choose proactively to report along…
Legislation implemented
Client: Board & Chief Executive Officer, Nature Conservation Trust of NSW A bespoke entity created under a specific piece of NSW legislation, the Nature Conservation Trust was established as an independent statutory body corporate, that also operated as a nonprofit organisation with deductible gift recipient status for tax purposes, pursuing objects in relation to nature conservation on…
Rectangles are not squares, and not all roles in decision making are decision making roles
The trick maths question back around mid-primary school is about squares and rectangles – both are defined by having four sides, two sets of parallel sides, and four corners of 90º. But squares have one more feature, crucial to the definition – all sides are the same length. So all squares are rectangles but not…
Clarifying consensus
Possibly the most frequent question put to us is “if we don’t have consensus amongst the board, how can we move forward?” For the largest part, this speaks to a very common misunderstanding that we strike in our work – about the meaning of consensus in a decision making process. Part of the difficulty is…
Coffee on the road: count the cups!
We had the pleasure this week of receiving a whole bunch of nice messages from clients and colleagues on reaching a milestone to which many a small business aspires – 15 years of work together! It doesn’t seem that long until we take a look back over the kaleidoscope of projects that we have had…
Sabbatical postcard – board decisions, how hard can they be anyhow?
Today brings another round of ‘journalism’ telling us that we live in a time of more information than ever before, and yet more social media messages urging us to think there is no mystery that can’t be solved if we google it hard enough or crowd-source the problem to enough people in enough places. That’s…
Coffee on the road: Enough! on April fools day
In an era of populism writ large in global events, seen equally in ‘any-opinion-will-do-if-I-shout-it-loud-enough’ leadership and public debate that often seems to have only a passing acquaintance with facts and reasoned logic, many of our clients and colleagues on boards are facing quite tough times in holding the line on more mature and considerate leadership….
Sabbatical postcard – lies, damned lies and statistics v2.0
What the numbers really say is an issue at least as old as published statistics themselves, but one finding a renaissance in the world of the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016: ‘post-truth’.* Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in a commercial organisation knows, for example, that it is possible to have both…