Client:Chief Executive Officer, ACPSEM As the world finds into a new gear that is not (at least not entirely) all-about-COVID-all-of-the-time, staff changes are an important opportunity to take that deep breath and think about some of the gaps that may have emerged in the rough and tumble of just surviving COVID-19. Lending a hand with…
Tag: board duties
Mind the gap: questions (still) wanting answers
When it comes to knowing what we need to know to make a decision, it is always tempting to think we can devise a better answer if we first ask more questions. And, no doubt at all, we would be the last ones to say “less questions” – in fact, as committed members of the…
Mind the gap: of missed opportunities or threats
Much to our surprise, recently we have had a return to board conversations about the dangers of developing tunnel vision on an organisation’s competitive situation – the sort of situation where a board doesn’t know what it doesn’t know and gets caught out. Our surprise about how often this is cropping up is partly because…
Governance: report delivered
Client: Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart The report from this project provides an extensive context for the goverance issues presently faced by the Congregation and its leaders, and then puts forward a substantive body of findings and recommendations for actions needed to revitalise the Congregation’s leadership functions in contemplation…
Governance: report on time for reflection
Client: Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart Over the cusp of the time in office of two leadership teams, this project consulted with, and then synthesized findings from, successive leadership teams at the helm of the Congregation. The time was right for reflecting on the changing needs of the Congregation,…
For the record …
In any governance project, a procedural point on which we inevitably face many questions is how to duly record what is decided by a board of directors (or any board of governance, however it might be named in other organisational structures). What is needed to show good governance? Don’t we need to do a ‘Hansard-style’…
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…
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 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,…
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…
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…
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: 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…
Coffee on the road – our word for the year
Big surprise – no, really, an actual surprise – our word for 2017 is not ‘coffee’! This year we are going public with our choice to applaud all those mature decision makers who know when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em, and when to walk off into the sunset for the next challenge –…
Post-merger integration for the Board
Client: Board of Directors, Grand Pacific Health Ltd As part of further implementing the merger of two previous Divisions of General Practice, review current Board and committee charters and related documents, and propose a body of governance documents for Board activities. A Board policy manual was approved by the Board 30 May 2013 and an…
Changing to grow
Client: Good Grief Ltd Assist the Board of Directors and senior team with the annual strategic planning cycle, including how to embrace new business models and developing an agreed set of outcomes for the next three years.
Sustainability: shaping the future as well as the now
Client: Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph The final report on a review of the sustainability of six not for profit enterprise operated under the auspices of the Congregation, including the application of a bespoke analytical framework and assessment methodology as the basis for advising on how to take these entities into the future….
Briefing on sustainable nonprofit enterprise
Client: Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart Culminating a year of study and review of not for profit enterprise operating under the auspices of the Congregation, this presentation provided the analytical framework and assessment methodology for advising on how to take these entities into the future.
Sustaining projects in evolving circumstances
Client: Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart Following on from series of papers developed for the NSW, SA, New Zealand, Queensland and Victoria Provinces to address issues of sustainability in institutional ministries, this work will now be extended to the works under the auspices of the Congregation.
The importance of breaking ranks in the board room
Carolyn Evans and Tanya van der Wall write about deserving trust – including the part where sometimes that trust requires dissent, and breaking ranks in the board room. Corporate governance has been a topic de jour routinely over the last decade or so. Some attempt to shroud it in professional mystery (perhaps to generate the…
Coffee on the (volunteering) road
Q: What do Chicago in winter, San Antonio in a hurricane, and Turin in late spring have in common? A: They are all places on the trail for our intrepid Managing Director while at work for her voluntary service with Zonta International – and rumour has it that they all have stellar coffee culture! “No…
Coffee on the road … in Aotearoa
We try to be polite about it, and not gloat, but one part of our work that we really love is exploring. Exploring a problem is the best deal in town, and when it comes with a side order of coffee in beautiful places, it is easy to do great work and find a fantastic…