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…
Tag: governance

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…

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…

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…

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 –…

Coffee makes planning go ’round
Carolyn Evans and Tanya van der Wall share our guide to keeping planning in perspective as a means to an end – all the coffee in the world won’t fix a governance and planning process that doesn’t keep “eyes on the prize” of realising the organisation’s purpose. Three decades since Michael Porter identified the ‘lost…
Sabbatical postcard … coffee on the road to international peace & security
In the first public airing of her thesis research, Managing Director Carolyn Evans this week presented her work at the Australia and New Zealand Society of International Law Postgraduate Workshop, held in Canberra on the eve of the Society’s annual conference. Using her experience in governance for government, commercial and nonprofit organisations, Carolyn presented her…

Project wrap up
Client: Board of Directors, Coast City Country General Practice Training Ltd In wrapping up this project the ThinkEvans team put focus on the purposes of the organisation (what are we here to do?) and aligning activities accordingly (how are we going to do it?), to make a strong foundation from which to measure outcomes (how well…

Sabbatical postcard: coffee on the road, for one
When it comes to decision making and governance, there is probably no bigger stage than that of the United Nations. There are many other organisations that may well have more, or more obvious, influence – like multinational corporations that design our lives with their products and redesign our planet with the impact of their production…

Sabbatical postcard: a dash of dissent in your coffee on the road
For those of us fascinated by leadership and decision making, Australia’s first time in three decades as UN Security Council President has been, to say the least, underwhelming. Any whelm was certainly hard to find in the one topic put forward for formal debate by Australia in the Presidential role – small arms. Not unimportant…

Sunset on a project
Client: Board of Directors, Grand Pacific Health Ltd As part of further implementing the merger of two previous Divisions of General Practice, re-think the executive structure and division of responsibilities in the senior team, and assist the Chair to select a preferred candidate for CEO for consideration by the board. The Board endorsed the recommended…

Sabbatical postcard … coffee on the “crowded” road
On sabbatical from consulting, while travelling in England for her PhD research Managing Director Carolyn Evans has discovered a whole new meaning to fighting the crowd to get coffee. Staying at the University of Warwick in Coventry, this was the crowd scene at the local coffee spot on the banks of the River Sherbourne. Having…

Digesting growth to leverage learning
Client: Board of Directors, Coast City Country General Practice Training Ltd In an environment of growth and success in winning and delivering on contracts, the principal objective of this project is to provide an independent viewpoint and make recommendations on options to evolve team capabilities to support sustainable operations over the long term. The project focus…

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…
Coffee on the geopolitical road
After three decades more or less confined to the peanut gallery of the United Nations, the indications now are that Prime Minister Julia Gillard will support a bid by Australia to become an elected member of the United Nations Security Council (for which former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is widely acknowledged as having had considerable…
Assessing professional development needs
Client: Illawarra-Shoalhaven Medicare Local As part of a collaboration with CCCGPTraining, ThinkEvans has launched a survey of primary health care providers in the Illawarra-Shoalhaven area, to gather evidence for assessing professional development needs of those working in primary health care.

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.

Planning Horizons
Client: Institute of Sisters of Mercy in Australia As a final assistance to the Institute which has now folded into the Institute of Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea, we have provided the leadership team with an implementation plan for 2011-2015. This is the culmination of several years of work asssisting the…

Fresh Horizons
Client: The Institute of Sisters of Mercy of Australia The Institute of Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea was inaugurated today as the culmination of years of thought and consultation amongst 14 Congregations of Sisters of Mercy in Australian and the Autonomous Region of Papua New Guinea. After working with the Sisters on…

Future Balance
Client: Victoria Province of the Brigidine Sisters Planning the care and support of Brigidine Sisters in the Victoria Province to 2020 and beyond, including using demographic modelling. A report to the Province Leadership Team, Victoria Province of the Brigidine Sisters.

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.