A NIMBLE ENTERPRISE GOVERNANCE SOLUTION

Governance Director is a powerful software solution that provides real time insight into the implementation of business strategies within the enterprise, highlighting what is working, flagging risks the organisation is exposed to and revealing what is being done to improve enterprise performance.

Governance Director removes the potential for unpleasant surprises that destabilise organisations, ensuring enterprise activities are aligned to the vision, performance is aligned with strategies and resources are aligned with risks. 

An Integrated Solution

A single solution for policy, process, decision and organisational risk management and compliance assurance.

Decision Governance

A robust process for decision making with automated visual analytics, easy to track and monitor decisions made in any forum or setting. Allows for devolved ownership of actions and measurement of results or outcomes.

Risk Governance

Easy for all staff to identify and manage risks locally in a consistent way. Ensures risks are aligned to the corporate objectives and draws attention to areas where obligations and aspirations might not be met. Allows organisations to assess the effectiveness of internal controls and quantify their impact on both reducing risk and ensuring that risks are being managed to an acceptable level.

Compliance Governance

A comprehensive compliance application designed to address the reporting, self-assessment and evidence- gathering needs with reports and dashboards. The fail-safe way to ensure and demonstrate that audit and other recommendations are delivered.

About Us

Governance Director, or GD as we call it, was conceived in April 2008 and formally established in May 2010. We’re physically based in London, but being an online system, the world is our home…

GD is a product and brand of Op2I Ltd. See more information about Op2i

At its core, Governance Director ensures managers use organisational assets in the way executive management want them to be used and in a manner that is compliant againt regulations, policies and the overall vision of the organisation.

Using Governance Direcror as your compliance assurance and risk management system means you are building feedback loops into your processes and systems, so you can learn about what is and isn’t working and hence refine the way you operate in order to avoid problems before they occur.

We Offer an intensive 1 day workshop, whose objective is to enable participants to:

1. Design an appropriate governance structure that provides oversight and insight
2. Use the Vision and Passion statement to align decisions
3. Understand the various governance options
4. Implement an appropriate decision rights model that spans organisational boundaries
5. Design a robust real time risk and audit assessment and management capability with monitoring systems

Who should attend?

The workshop is designed for organisations that wish to improve their governance, strategy and decision making processes and those implementing or seeking to implement transformational programmes, which require robust oversight and insight at a governance level and clear accountability and commitment at the operational level.

Content of workshop

The workshop would normally cover a number of themes. However, before the workshop we will arrange a conference call with you to ascertain any particular areas that are of concern or which you would like to focus and structure the workshop to ensure your specific requirements and met.

Workshop outcomes

At the end of the workshop, participants and the organisation will be able to:

• Understand and recognise what is required to improve governance in their organisations
• Understand how they can improve their decision making processes
• Develop a robust decision rights model that is appropriate for their organisations
• Understand how to assess, manage and capitalise on risks as part of the governance process
• Move governance from a top-down bureaucratic reactive system to a bottom-up proactive value adding system
• Ask the right governance questions that deliver real insight and shape strategy

Contact us now to arrange a workshop that will help drive your organisational performance. 

Governance Director helps implement Good Governance. The governance principals upon which Governance Director is built include:

1. Vision-Driven

• Not a one-time exercise
• Statement of crucial importance to be drilled down and folded into deliberations
• Integrated into meetings, decision-making, risk assessment and management

 2. Strategic Thinking

• Not periodic; part of the ongoing work of the board
• Joint effort by board and staff
• Board agendas, materials and insights defined and distributed well in advance

3. Constructive Partnership – boards connected with operations

• Open and candid conversations
• Board members have direct access to Senior Management Team

4. Compliance with Integrity

• Code of Ethics
• Audits (of compliance requirements, systems, processes)
• Proactive risk management

5. Results Oriented

• Efficiency, effectiveness, and impact
• Organisational dashboard of performance and Resource management

6. Culture of Inquiry

• Seek more information, question assumptions, and challenge conclusions
• Draw on multiple sources of information and perspectives
• Ensure all voices heard
• Every one must come with Data

7. Independent-Mindedness

• Apply rigorous conflict of interest procedures
• Independence and independent-mindedness
• Avoid undue influence based on loyalty, seniority, position, reputation
• Where needed, consider devil’s advocates

8. Ethos of Transparency

• Communications to and from the board
• Whistleblower Policy

9. Revitalisation

• Board composition tied to strategies and needs
• Diversity
• Term limits
• Continuous recruitment and rotation

10. Continuous Learning

• About the organisation, others, best practices
• Beyond the boardroom
• Self-assessment

All very well and widely accepted - but - how do you get governance to be more than just CONFORMANCE and about PERFORMANCE?
 

Governance Director ensures an enterprise maximises its strategic value by ensuring that all of its operating elements are in harmony…i.e strategic alignment. Governance Director sustains this alignment through a management process called strategic governance. The Governance Director strategic dashboard provides a simple unifying analytical framework for strategic governance.

 << Download an overview of sourcing decisions risk governance here >>

<< See a quick animated explanation here >>

We offer organisations what we've called the “strategy surgery day”, where we utilise our governance platform to help develop and or test complex strategic issues you may be facing.

A one day intensive strategy surgery day, with your key stakeholders, a complex strategic problem you may be facing, Governance Director, and our expert consultants to facilitate the day. By the end of the day, you will have:

- Re-assessed and or tested your strategy

- Understood if there is consensus, or a lack of consensus between the stakeholders in identifying the various strategic choices

- A first past view of the decision model for choosing between the various options

- A first pass assessment of the feasibility of the various strategic options

- A first pass assessment of the risks associated with the decision

- A 30+ page report at the end of the day

Call us or drop us a line for further details or arrange a strategy surgery day!

GD works with its partners to help push better risk governance to various communities. We work with our partners to create packages suitable to the market and their members and proactively work with them to create best practice risk analysis templates that are relevant for their audience.

We are always keen to talk with prospective partners and explain how we can help you engage with your community, provide additional value to your offering and help instil best practice risk governance within your community.

If you are an existing GD Partner, please contact your GD relationship manager in the first instance. If you need technical support, please using the support and feedback function with GD to request urgent assisance. If you wish to talk to GD management, please either call the office or email us.

Priced to grow in line with usage and requirements, Governance Director provides organisations of all sizes cost affective assess to enterprise wide governance, that encompasses policy, process, control, decision, issue and risk management facililities.

Contact us to get a custom quote for implementing enterprise wide governance within your organisation.

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Want to hear and learn more about Governance Director, or good governance generally….then please view our webinar. Approx 30 minutes and you walk away with the answers to your questions. We’ll also give you access to white papers and more...

Contact us today!

•  An Authorised Referrer receives product-specific training program and are independently responsible for the presentation, consultancy and sale of the respective products in accordance with Governance Director quality guidelines.

• Certified Referrer Partners have proved themselves to be competent in project implementation, and their in-depth product and professional expertise is verified in a regular certification process.

• Premium Referrer Partners hold an extensive reference portfolio of completed projects and are distinguished by a large number of staff who have achieved certification. This category also includes partner companies with a strong and proven industry sector focus.

Who are Governance Director’s Customers?

Portals  |  Trade Associations  |  Chambers of Commerce  |  Compliance Officers |  Consultants  |  Magazines

Portals – Do you run a business focused website or portal that focuses on a specific niche? Does your community face challenging or complex decision problems – then why don’t you become a GD Partner? You can seamlessly integrate GD into your website and offer you own branded GD services to your community - you could charge a transaction fee to your community for access to decision support tools or integrate with your marketing affiliate programme – either way: you improve your site interactivity, engage with your audience and earn revenues – with no risk! Contact Now!

Trade associations – Most trade associations are membership bodies that exist to promote best practice within a particular industry sector or functional area. Why not add an additional benefit for your members by partnering with GD to develop best practice decision templates for your industry or function and make these available to the global GD community? You get the opportunity to share revenues and by being a GD Partner, your members can get discounted access to GD!

Chambers of commerce – Chambers of Commerce usually have a diverse mix of members, a few large organisations and many smaller businesses, all aspiring to grow. Most join the chambers for two reasons: 1. Network with fellow peers and 2. Support in building better stronger businesses. Why not offer your members the ultimate support - access to GD and the Knowledge Exchange,  which will provide them access to decision templates, to decision experts and more – a lot cheaper than hiring consultants!

Compliance officers - Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK are spending billions on compliance: £2bn a year on health and safety compliance; £1.8bn a year on complying with tax law, £780m a year on environmental and waste regulations, and £370m on equality and diversity rules.

In total, UK SMEs spend £9.3bn a year on red tape, equivalent to £2,100 per year per company!!

The stress or worry caused by inadvertent failure to comply with regulations and the administrative burden of compliance regulations is putting huge pressures on SME staff – resources taken away from what would have been productive work!

If you have the task of ensuring compliance within government agencies, why don’t you consider introducing compliance self assessment - an online decision system that helps SMEs ensure that they are complying with relevant laws and regulations, quickly, efficiently and without having to seek the services of expensive lawyers or solicitors…By creating the compliance decision templates and centralising compliance, you can monitor progress, identify areas where work is required to meet compliance obligations within your member base, as well significantly reducing the cost of compliance for your members!!

Consultants – Do you advise organisations on what are complex and strategic issues? Do you need to ensure you get the buy-in of the key client stakeholders? Do you need to reduce the overall costs of your consulting projects, without losing consulting margins? Then you should be using GD as part of your consultancy work. It will help achieve all the above! Plus, you could upload decision templates into the GD Knowledge Exchange and promote your services to a broader buyer community!

Governance Director fully recognises the challenge faced by organisations. It empowers organisations with a nimble governance, compliance and risk-management solution to deliver solid decision trust, control and oversight, without the expensive costs associated with GRC systems.

Our simple, cost-effective solution helps organisations build consensus, co-operation and commitment across the enterprise to deliver transformational business performance.

The system uses visual analytics and executive dashboards to provide real insight across the enterprise:

Consolidation - A single, consolidated view of all disparate poliies, process, decisions, issues, risks and compliance. By providing staff with a real-time snapshot of performance, potential issues can be identified and dealt with more quickly than ever before.

Visualisation - View the most relevant information, in the right amount of detail, in an easy-to-understand graphical format, enabling users to immediately see where the issues lie and distribute them to the relevant staff.

Analysis - With just a couple of clicks of the mouse, users can immediately drill-down to get to the root cause of business issues.

Improvement - Organisations don't get all the management and governance information required to drive performance and ensure conformance across the enterprise? With GD they can!

KEY BENEFITS

•  Policy, Process and Control Registries
•  Decision, Risk and Issue Registries
•  Joint Project and Partner Governance
•  Enterprise-wide Oversight
•  Dashboard For Strategic Insight
•  Risk Management Across The Enterprise
•  Support For Third Party Audit
•  Visible Individual Accountability
•  Standardised Decision Making Process
•  Automated Alerts and Reminders

System Features

Secure and scalable

• Scalable, future proof investment
• Encoding, user access control and IP checking
• Full user access and rights management

User friendly

• Intuitive, easy to deploy and use
• Dashboards with drill-down analysis
• Visual analytics that deliver real insight
• Template library

Flexible

• Configure as and when required
• Standalone modular system with XML interface
• Rapid deployment across the enterprise
• Ability to extend to your supply chain partners

Workflow enabled

• Activity and task management
• Automated alerts and reminders
• Automated activity analysis

Integrated platform

• Cleary defined roles, responsibilities and accountability
• Policy, Process, Control, Decision and Risk registration
• Dynamic approval authorities management
• Compliance assessment, scheduling and issue management
• Enterprise-wide dashboards and scorecards
• Centralised activity management tracking and monitoring
• Automated documentation and reporting

A Nimble Enterprise-Wide Governance Platform

A quick intro to the need for Governance Director

Governance Director has a built in enterprise-wide decision making process, one that engages key stakeholders, delivers rational, robust, risk mitigated decisions and builds committment to the chosen course of action. Enabling the separation between decision makers and decision takers.

Many business leaders in governance roles in larger organisations make the mistake of considering their role as one of “making” strategic decisions and making business strategy rather than “taking” strategic decisions and delivering strategic direction.

In so doing, by taking the responsibility for making the strategic decision and business strategy they lose the right to sit in judgement or act as arbitrator when things go wrong. The strategy and strategic decision becomes their ruler, rather than them ruling the strategy. Inevitably it makes it more difficult to force a change in strategic direction when needed. Business leaders need to look more closely at how their organisation can make and propose decisions without moving the responsibility for the decision to the business leaders.

The more important the decision, perversely the more important it is for a business leader to take a decision ratification role rather than decision maker/owner role. Governance Director enables businesses to optimise their decision choices, reduce the risks of selecting poor strategic options and enables them to get your staff fully behind you in decision implementation.

The concept of governance rather than being a top down process; one that is about direction, should actually be about a bottom up process; one that engages stakeholders and employees. This bottom up process is more about consensus and debate.

Leaders need to engage in a delicate balancing act with regard to nurturing confidence, dissent, and commitment within their organisations. Fostering constructive dissent is important. Insufficient debate among team members can diminish the extent to which plans and proposals undergo critical evaluation. Flawed ideas remain unchallenged, and creative alternatives are not generated.

On the other hand, when leaders arrive at a final decision, they need everyone to accept the outcome and support its implementation. They cannot allow continued dissension to disrupt the effort to turn that decision into action. Leaders must balance the need for “diversity in counsel, unity in command”. To accomplish this, leaders must ensure that each participant has a fair and equal opportunity to voice their opinions during the decision process, and they must demonstrate that they have considered those views carefully and genuinely. Moreover, they must clearly explain the rationale for their final decision, including why they chose to accept some input and advice while rejecting other suggestions. By doing so, leaders can encourage divergent thinking while building decision acceptance.

Every decision is made within a decision environment, which is defined as the collection of information, alternatives, values, and preferences available at the time of the decision. An ideal decision environment would include all possible information, all of it accurate, and every possible alternative. However, both information and alternatives are constrained because the time and effort to gain information or identify alternatives is limited. The time constraint simply means that a decision must be made by a certain time. The effort constraint reflects the limits of manpower, money, and priorities.
 

Governance Director provides a robust, yet flexible risk management and compliance assurance platform - one that goes well beyond corporate reporting requirements.

RISK

Every organisation, large and small, is exposed to risk in everything they do, at every level of the organisation, every day! Yet the vast majority of people in organisations act as if they are somehow immune to risk, or that risk is something that belongs to someone else (a client, a supplier, an investor, a bank, members of the public or the directors).
 

Recent history in financial and energy markets illustrates the point. Organisations, large and small repeatedly fail to spot the consequences of risk, They fail at all points of the compass, they: don’t identify risk; fail to take risk seriously; don’t attempt to view risk from other people's perspective; delegate risk to others as if to say if I delegate it, it doesn't exist; fail to institutionalise risk assessment to properly understand the nature of risk and who is impacted by their business decisions.

Too few organisations seek to systematically understand the risks they are, or will be exposed to; especially when dealing with external stakeholders. How many organisations actually bother to understand whether other organisations they partner with and delegate risk to, actually understand the risks they are assuming? Strategic business relationships, such as outsourcing, alliances and JVs can create new value because of the expertise and opportunity another organisation brings. Strategic relationships between key suppliers and their customers can bring benefits such as efficiency savings, improved customer satisfaction and innovation. The benefits can be significant. Yet over 50% of outsourcing deals fail to deliver on expectations. Poor collaboration, poor mutual risk management and a weak relationship, too often results in significant loss of the value of the original business case.

Organisations take for granted certain risks - which can focus resources on lower priority risks and ignore more critical or impacting risks.

Risk management has developed as a separate function within many large organisations, and is only today being recognised as a fundamental tenant of good governance. All too often, risk has been narrowly confined to financial and market risk, being primarily driven by financial institutions. However a broader category of risk needs to be assessed and adequately managed. These broader risks include decision risk and operational risks. The traditional approach to risk has been to view it as a negative outcome - nevertheless it is also worth stating that risk can have positive impact and an organisation must balance risk with reward. Innovation and new ideas come with risk. Without risk there would be little innovation. In this sense it is important for the leadership to provide the boundary conditions, direction and guidance that helps set the tone for appropriate risk taking.

Risk assessment and management must also be seen to be a distributed, shared activity that everyone is engaged in. It cannot be simply at the realm of a risk department, for they will have little experience of day to day operational risks. For risk assessment and management to be an enterprise activity, there needs to be a guiding hand from the senior management that provides the appetite it has for risk taking and the treatment expected of certain types of risks. Without this, anarchy will reign. The leadership must instil processes and systems for risk assessment, measurement and treatment across the enterprise.
  

Governance Director makes available, best practice risk analysis to understand, evaluate and manage risk across the organisation, without the need for additional infrastructure investment or overly bureaucratic processes.

COMPLIANCE

Governance all too often focuses on control and compliance, largely driven by legislation or regulation. However, control and compliance can be a process that helps improve business performance more widely beyond those areas that are governed by legislation and regulation.

In a forward looking performance driven model of governance, there should be direct linkage between enterprise wide policies, the processes engaged within the enterprise and the controls used to ensure those processes and the policies are being implemented as the board expects.

The compliance activity will include testing for activities required for by legislation and regulation. However, it must also test to ensure that the wider policies and processes that have been designed to accelerate enterprise performance are working and being implemented correctly, and where these are not satisfactory, remedial actions initiated on an ongoing basis.

In such a model, an organisation can actively engage control and compliance within its wider operational processes. Rather than having compliance occupy a parallel position, often treated with contempt within the organisation, it can become an integral proactive part of operational practice.

The central question within this model is how you practically link policy and processes with compliance, in a manner that is not overtly complicated. For the more complex you make the process, the less it will get used, and the less strategic alignment it will deliver. The only real mechanism of doing so is through automation, where policies, processes and controls are inter-linked and responsibility of each is assigned and progress monitored on a scheduled basis automatically through software.
 

Governance Directors helps implement a robust joint governance system.

Increasingly, organisations are specialising in their core competences and using strategic partners to provide the end to end delivery of products and services to their customers. These strategic partners could be local and increasingly global. Sometimes strategic partners are used to share common assets and resources and make use of shared service centres.

Effective joint working arrangements have the potential to produce substantial benefits by reducing duplication, increasing flexibility and making best use of shared resources for the benefit of each of the respective organisation’s customers. However, it is recognised that close arrangements for working together also bring with them potential risks which need to be identified and effectively managed, especially in the areas of financial management, performance management, staffing and governance arrangements.

Although the number of organisations pursuing strategic alliances or outsourcing initiatives continues to rise, numerous studies reveal that more than half of these investments fail to return the benefits executives expect; derailing an organisation, losing significant time and money in sunk investment, and in some cases harming the relationships with customers. Most failures can be traced back to a fundamental lapse in managerial understanding, oversight and control; in affect to a failure in governance. Good joint governance enables parties to make decisions efficiently and effectively, monitor and refine outcomes and build trust. Organisations which avoid discussing governance end up addressing it over and over again, for each decision.

Characteristics, values, and best practices of multi-party governance structures:

• Openness (to diverse and divergent interests, facilitating direct participation or appropriate representation of all interested and impacted parties);

• Transparency (of the decision-making process, of documents, of outcomes);

• Accessibility (creating mechanisms for all potentially affected stakeholders to have meaningful substantive engagement);

• Accountability and measurement (the capacity to demonstrate that the governance process works fairly and consistent with its vision and mission, and is yielding results);

• Credibility (widespread recognition and acceptance of the organisation’s processes and outcomes);

• Data and wisdom driven (decisions are based to the greatest possible extent on objective data, evidence and from experience from the key stakeholders);

• Consensus-based (a priority on wrangling issues until meaningful consensus is reached, with the possibility of a backstop “voting process” when necessary to avoid stalemate);

• Opportunity for appeal/challenge (some appropriate intra- or extra-organisational level of review intended to bolster confidence in the governance process and seek corrections where justified); and

• Ability to resist capture (balanced against “openness", ensuring that decision making cannot become biased and that the process cannot otherwise be unfairly skewed in favour of certain participant agendas).

A good governance system must incorporate regular, formal reviews of progress towards targets and outcomes and use the governance review process to identify areas of development. The overall performance management process must form a key element of the strategic governance framework contributing to overall strategic performance to allow change and improvements to be made. All performance management systems should demonstrate a shared vision of the partners’ joint objectives and have measurable performance targets and outcomes which relate to both operating unit(s) and wider organisational objectives.

Good joint governance counters the tendencies of fragmentation and disconnectedness and requires a shift in mindsets.

Governance Director provides a robust platform for Local Authorities to ensure they are delivering better value for money, are engaging with their citizens and enabling decision making to be made at a local level..

Local government faces a time of both crisis and opportunity. The period of austerity will challenge conventional wisdom and existing practice and may pave the way for the pulling down of barriers and inspire new and innovative thinking.

The UK public services are under pressure as never before with a massive deficit expected to exceed £170Bn, the laying off over 700,000 jobs, this with rising customer expectations in the media age, with less and less tolerance for inefficient and impersonal public services.

Local government bodies are big business, employing over two million people and accounting for 25% of public spending. They are vitally important to all tax payers and citizens. Authorities need to ensure the delivery of high-quality services to them. Closure of public services must be the very last option. It is vital for local authorities to start thinking of opportunities to think and do things differently.
  

Governance is about how local government bodies ensure that they are doing the right things, in the right way, for the right people, in a timely, inclusive, open, honest and accountable manner. It comprises the systems and processes, and cultures and values, by which local government bodies are directed and controlled and through which they account to, engage with and, where appropriate, lead their communities .

Good governance leads to good management, good performance, good stewardship of public money, good public engagement and, ultimately, good outcomes for citizens and service users. Good governance enables an authority to pursue its vision effectively as well as underpinning that vision with mechanisms for control and management of risk.
  

The Localism Act for instance introduces significant changes to local democracy and accountability and represents a fundamental shift in the way that local decisions are made and local services delivered. The ‘general power of competence’ gives local authorities the legal capacity to do anything that an individual can do. The Act also grants a range of new freedoms and flexibilities to local authorities, communities and businesses.

The Localism Act’s ‘duty to cooperate’, gives a clear direction that individual authorities will need to provide a substantial level of analysis and evidence for the decisions they make. The duty to cooperate delivers a requirement, for local authorities and other public bodies, to work positively together. Critically, the Act sets out the need for the duty to cooperate to be an ongoing process rather than something where authorities come together over single issues or specific matters. It envisages a fundamental change in thenetwork and relationships between authorities.

Cooperation and joint delivery of services is not new, but its role is changing and it’s taking central stage.

Governance Director provides charites a cost effective system for implementing enterprise-wide governance, which not only drives performance, but provides greater transparency, ensures compliance against regulations and engages with stakeholders.

The environment in which voluntary and community organisations operate is changing. There is an ever increasing onus on trustees and boards to ensure a robust system of self governance. Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP 2005) stresses the growing importance of effective trustees training inductions. The Charity Act 2006 also places more and more emphasis on governance. The Companies Act 2006 removes the special provisions concerning small company charities. These are just a few examples of where changes in regulation are placing more weight on good governance.

Moreover the UK government foresees an increase in the role and reliability on this sector to deliver the services demanded by local communities. The Government has unveiled new Big Society plans to make it easier and more attractive to give time and money to good causes. The Localism Bill currently before Parliament is a landmark piece of legislation, lifting top-down bureaucratic burdens such as the requirement to prepare regional strategies and empowering communities with new rights, such as the right to bid for ownership of community assets and to challenge to run local authority services.
 

The turbulent economic climate has put an unprecedented amount of pressure on charities. Tougher economic times have resulted in significant cuts in statutory funding,reduced donations from the public and a sharp rise in the demand for the services that charities provide.

The charity sector is also being called on to play increasing role in delivering public services.

At the same time, charities are under intense scrutiny internally and by the public. They need to be increasingly transparent and cost effective. They face significant strategic and operational challenges to improve efficiencies and demonstrate value-for-money, whilst delivering high quality services.

More and more charities will find it difficult to continue to operate in this environment. Good governance, accountability and clear and concise reporting will be critical to survival. Good governance goes beyond corporate governance, which is to a large extent historic, financially focused and concerned with how the board protects the external stakeholders funds, who may be the government or public donors in this case. However in times of change, another aspect of governance needs careful consideration, that of strategic governance. Strategic governance is about the board having oversight and insight into what decisions, risks and compliance status the organisation has at any given time.

The decision to approach governance in a more systematic way may well be triggered by a desire to open up new fund-raising avenues by seeking official charitable status, requiring incorporation. Because the organisation may now have access to funds from the government, foundations, or the public at large, questions of accountability become more salient, as does the role of the board.

Governance Director provides a unique platform for state schools, academies and public schools to implement robust governance, one that aligns teachers, head teachers, governors and parents to deliver better teaching outcomes, whilst cost effectively enabling the institution to comply with policies and regulations and dramatically reduce risks.

Whilst the principles of governance are broadly the same in academies as they are in maintained schools, the corporate structure of an academy trust is different. As companies limited by guarantee, academies have members as well as governors and governors are unlikely to be familiar with the regulatory requirements of company law that apply to academies. An important benefit of academy status is the flexibility of the governance structure and the greater autonomy that the board of trustees have compared to maintained schools. A sound understanding of the governance arrangements will allow boards to unlock these potential benefits.

The governance framework should clarify the duties, roles, accountabilities, decision making powers and responsibilities of all stakeholders, facilitating consensus and alignment.

A performance framework must also be provided for this structure which seeks to define the inter-relationships and reporting routes for each level of governance, and where relevant, how these relate to the changing role of the local authority (LA).

Clarity over decision-making is a further imperative in this arrangement, where individuals are clearly mandated to take certain decisions, within the accountabilities responsibilities arrangements, in order that actions will be undertaken that will deliver the required functions and achieve required outcomes.

The governing body of an Academy trust is ultimately responsible for the governance of an Academy, for safeguarding its assets and ensuring that it is run in the most efficient and effective manner. It is extremely important that all trustees are fully aware of their responsibilities and understand the steps they need to take to ensure that the Academy trust is properly governed.

The governing body (board) should take collective responsibility for all decisions and be involved in setting the strategic direction of the Academy.

An effective board understands the interests of all stakeholders and gives them the opportunity to voice their views. There may well be conflicting demands between stakeholders and it is important to consider how these can be managed to the overall benefit of the Academy.

Trustees have a duty to ensure that the Academy always acts within the objectives laid down in its governing document and to consider the interests of the Academy as opposed to any personal benefit. 

Some Examples of how GD can be used to automate Governance, Risk and Compliance Processes in Schools:

Educational Assessments - GD can be used by teachers to quickly carry out individual student performance appraisals. Those appraisals can be reviewed over time to determine whether progress is being made to achievement of specific educational attainment targets. The output reports available from GD can be used with parents and others to visually demonstrate how the student is progressing and where specific weaknesses and strengths can be found. It can even be used with the students parents to get a clear understanding of the parents priorities and how the student is progressing in the context of those priorities.

Special Educational Needs Case Management - In situations where there are a range of agencies interested and involved in a students development it can be difficult to gain a comprehensive and unified understanding of the various perspectives and experiences of the professionals and other stakeholders involved. GD provides the opportunity for all stakeholders to be consulted outside the context of the case review meeting so that areas of consensus and areas of difference in both priorities and assessments can be identified before case meetings. This information can be used by the SEN coordinator to prepare risk assessments and action plans in relation to the findings in advance of the case meeting. At the case meetings differences in perspectives can be focused on and reviewed and the impact of those differences assessed as specific topics.

Compliance Management - Within all educational establishments there are a vast number of regulatory requirements to be fulfilled and an ongoing requirement to show evidence of regular self assessment of compliance status. GD provides facilities that enable permanent records to be maintained of compliance status over time and evidence of progress in improving that status. GD further provides facilities to enable compliance risks to be identified, assessed, allocated as responsibilities of individuals and then managed over time as a set of risk mitigation actions and tasks.

Risk Assessments - Schools have the responsibility to understand the risks faced by staff and students inside and outside the immediate school environment. GD provides the facility to standardise the process of risk assessment and risk assessment templates such that assessments are comprehensive while being efficient to carry out. Once risk assessments have been carried out there is the further opportunity to manage the consequential processes of risk mitigation.

Training Needs Assessment - Typically a member of staff and their line manager (or other involved parties) would carry out separate training needs assessments using the system's prioritisation and performance scoring systems. The members of staff would meet and gain an understanding from the reports how the priorities of the member of staff and line manager differ and where they differ in terms of their views of current capability or performance. Those differences would be reviewed and a consensus determined. The systems reports would help focus attention on the areas that the teacher needed to improve on which were also most important in the eyes of school management. 360 degrees personnel evaluation - In preparing for a promotion it is often useful for a member of staff to gain an understanding of how they are viewed by their colleagues and other stakeholders in the organisation. Understanding their peceived weaknesses and strengths can help a staff member either engage with others to change incorrect perceptions or help identify areas needing improvement.

Staff Post Selection - Usually within schools, staff selection is carried out by a senior member of staff, a line manager for the position and a member of the governing body by carrying out interviews and viewing the teaching capabilities of the candidates. Where many schools get into difficulty is when there are differences of opinion about the selection, because the different assessors are viewing the candidate from different perspectives. With GD a different transparent process can be engaged. Firstly, before the interviews etc take place the assessors can use GD to come to a consensus about what the assessment criteria are to be for the post and also determine the relative importance of those assessment criterion one against another. During or immediately after the interview the assessors can individually complete their assessment of the candidate, then based
on the GD analysis identify the candidates most likely to fulfil the needs of the post. Any differences in the assessors evaluation can be identified and discussed specifically and the impact on the outcome of the evaluation determined. Visual evidence of the selection are available if necessary for candidate or other interested party feedback after the decision. In itself the evaluation data is a permanent record of the criteria used in making the selection and would be an evidential basis for defending equal opportunity challenges should they arise. 

Procurement – From time to time schools engage in major procurements where public procurement requirements come into effect over and above school procurement guidelines. In these contexts it is vital that schools carry out formal evaluations of a range of alternatives and that such evaluations offer full transparency as a quality procurement process. GD facilitates this process by providing requirement weighting assistance, along with formalised compliance scoring facilities to automate the process of tender evaluation. GD generates a range of instant report output that allows school managers and governors to understand at a glance what decisions should be taken and why they constitute a good decision without the need for time consuming spreadsheet modelling.

Governance Director provides unparalled oversight, in real time, of what is happening across the enterprise, providing real time insight into the implementation of business strategies within the enterprise, highlighting what is working, flagging risks the organisation is exposed to and revealing what is being done to improve enterprise performance.

It removes the potential for unpleasant surprises that destabilise organisations, ensuring enterprise activities are aligned to the vision, performance is aligned with strategies and resources are aligned with risks.

Governance Director provides transparency into the decisions and decision making proceses across the enterprise. It also delivers the capability to provide support for third party audits into compliance, risk and general governance.

Governance Director provides full visibility of individual accountability across the organisation. At a click of a button, senior management can get insight into who is responsible for policies, processes and controls, who is making decisions, who is raising issues and risks and ultimately who is approving these. The system can also provide details of the actions and tasks that individuals are working on to implement enterprise initiatives.

Governance Director helps implement a standardised decision making process.

The use of the AHP process within GD is a powerful aid for decision makers. It helps in articulating selection criteria, arriving at consistent weights for each criterion, and, when necessary, arriving at a final consensus ranking amongst the stakeholders.

It is a proven technique for providing a systematic approach to solving an inherently unstructured problem. The sophisticated and mathematically sound pair-wise comparison process allows for the simultaneous and disciplined assessment of both qualitative and quantitative criteria.

In situations where a committee is charged with making the decision, AHP offers additional unique advantages over the traditional approach. It provides a forum for the generation of discussion and clarification of the selection criteria.

GD can also serve to balance power with the selection group by managing data anonymously, so less-powerful group members have no less a voice than anyone else on the committee.

Governance Director enables SMEs to drive the performance of their firms by optimising their decision choices, understanding and reducing the risks the firm is exposed and creating strategic alignment. It also provides a cost effective system of compliance assurance.

Business owners and senior management are entrusted to make difficult, complex judgements which are critical for their organisation’s success. A wrong decision by the CEO can cost a company dearly at best and can put the business in jeopardy at worst.

The economic tsunami which swept away countries and companies around the world in 2008 has exposed the weakness in purely rational thinking prevalent in economics. People exhibit bounded rationality while making decisions. The ability to make rational choices is bounded by insufficient information about the problem and relevant criteria, constraint of time and cost on quality and amount of data and mental constraints to solve the problem.

As a result, people compromise on the best possible solution and go for what is acceptable - people satisfice rather than optimise while making decisions.

Most small businesses use “gut” instinct, expensive consultants or simply muddle through when it comes to complex, strategic decisions. 

Governance Director enables professional service firms to not only implement good enterprise governance, but manage their key assets, i.e. staff within complex matrix management structures.

The central repository of policies, processes and decisions provides a cost effective knowledge management system, whilst the issue and risk management modules enables the organisation to respond to changing environments and client requirements. 

For professional service firms, their employees are their biggest asset. Yet in many of these firms, most employees are not consulted when it comes to major strategic decisions. The board, or for that matter, senior management have little understanding of employee morale. Many get outside consultants to help in areas, which their employee base could have resolved much more quickly and certaintly for a lot less cost.

Engagement with the employee base, whether in strategic decisions, understand morale and engage in career development (360) programmes, or to utilise the knowledge of the internal crowd, i,.e. your employees to improve organisational performance, can bring about substantial improvement to your bottom line.

The Governance Director Platform, has at its core, stakeholder engagement and consensus analysis, allow organisations to engage with their stakeholders, be they employees, suppliers, customers, or the wider public, as part of a strategic decision or just as a simple survey. The consensus analysis functionality enables users to quickly analyse the degree of consensus. 

Governance Director provides a robust platform for Joint Governance between Local Authorities, Clinical Commissioning Groups and Health and Wellbeing Boards.

The Government’s ambitions for health and wellbeing envisage clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and local authorities jointly leading the local health and care system, through Health and Wellbeing Boards (NWBs) and in collaboration with their communities.
  

New relationships between councillors, directors of public health and clinicians will be absolutely vital to the success of the reforms.

Most partnerships and collaborations fail to achieve their objectives – fact! Most organisations enter into partnership (akin to a marriage) with the best of intentions, assuming that they will remain in a permanent and happy union. Unfortunately, it is not always the case that relationships work out as planned. Relationships are organic living things that grow up between individuals and organisations over time. Like any living thing, relationships can be healthy and live a long life, or they can get sickly and die.
  

Good joint governance counters these tendencies of fragmentation and disconnectedness and requires a shift both in the vertical relationships between centre, region, locality and neighbourhood and in the horizontal linkages between organisations at different levels of the governance system. Governance in this sense is used more widely, and more accurately, than the simple definition of governance just being about compliance and accountability.

Good governance must be proactive, must balance compliance and conformance with performance and passion. It must integrate strategy, action and mindsets to the enduring vision that is provided by those that “govern”. It must integrate systems, structures, strategy, silos and styles of behaviour.
 

Making group decisions gets a whole lot easier when your team agrees upon a decision making process.

GD enables stakeholders within a decision process to voice their opinion on the relative weights of the criteria to be used in making judgments between decision choices. GD graphical shows the differences between the relative weights of the project stakeholders, which can be drilled down further to explore the underlying detail for the root cause for the differences.

This enables the project team to identify the critical differentiating criteria separating the stakeholders, such that these can be discussed in an open manner and consensus reached.

GD’s consensus analysis function provides visual analysis of the areas of agreement and disagreement within the decision group. It also shows the degrees of agreement and disagreement – helping the group more quickly understand and resolve possible differences.

Governance Director has built in registries for authorities, policies, processes, controls, decisions, issues and risks. These registries provide oversight into what is happening across the organisation in real time, whilst the integration of these registries provides strategic insight into how strategies are being implement, how performance is being managed and what is being done, by whom, to drive organisational performance.

Managers must pay close attention to how they balance competing pressures in their organisations, and how their words and actions shape the perceptions and beliefs of organisation members and wider stakeholders.

Managers need to engage in a delicate balancing act with regard to nurturing confidence, dissent, and commitment within and beyond their organisations to key stakeholders – which may include the public (either as customers or voters).

Fostering constructive dissent is important.  Insufficient debate among team members can diminish the extent to which plans and proposals undergo critical evaluation. Flawed ideas remain unchallenged, and creative alternatives are not generated.

On the other hand, when managers arrive at a final decision, they need everyone to accept the outcome and support its implementation. They cannot allow continued dissension to disrupt the effort to turn that decision into action. Managers must balance the need for "diversity in counsel, unity in command."  To accomplish this, managers must insure that each participant has a fair and equal opportunity to voice their opinions during the decision process, and they must demonstrate that they have considered those views carefully and genuinely. Moreover, they must clearly explain the rationale for their final decision, including why they chose to accept some input and advice while rejecting other suggestions. By doing so, managers can encourage divergent thinking while building decision acceptance.

This is precisely what Governance Director does.

The work of managers, scientists, engineers and lawyers is the work that charts the course of society. The work of economic and governmental organisations is largely focused on problem solving and making decisions and it is this work - setting goals, finding or designing suitable courses of action, and evaluating and choosing among alternative actions that helps effectively managing risk.

The first three of these activities: fixing agendas, setting goals, finding suitable courses of action and evaluating and choosing amongst alternative actions - that requires urgent attention.

Nothing is more important for the well-being of society than that this work be performed effectively, that we address successfully the many problems requiring attention at the national level (the budget and trade deficits, AIDS, national security, the mitigation of earthquake damage), at the level of business organisations (product improvement, efficiency of production, choice of investments), and at the level of our individual lives (choosing a career or a school, buying a house).

The quality of our decisions and problem solutions are stored in million of human heads – most problems that are encountered by an organisation or individual, have been encountered before, by many others, who will have learned from experience what are the right approaches, criteria, and information needs for reaching the optimal choice.

GD provides a framework for the collection of wisdom held in the minds of such individuals, such that “best practice” risk analysis templates and checklists can be created for the benefit of all.

GD Open Source Risk models build upon the wisdom of crowds’ theory - inviting users to help develop community risk models, templates and checklists for the community. An interactive platform is provided that experts (or indeed non-experts) can contribute to help build a truly inclusive and best practice risk templates. These templates are made available to the GD subscriber community free of charge.

Visual analytics synthesise information and provide users deep insight even when analysis is derived from large quantities of dynamic and disparate data.

Visual analytics is more than visualisation. It can rather be seen as an integral approach combining visualisation, human factors, and data analysis. Visual analytics integrate methodology from information analytics, geospatial analytics, and scientific analytics. Human factors especially (e.g., interaction, cognition, perception, collaboration, presentation, and dissemination) play a key role in the communication between human and computer, as well as in the decision-making process.

GD integrates visual analytics for better decision enterprise wide governance.

Please use the contact us form to get in touch.

Governance Director is currently privately funded by Op2i, but we are keen to hear from potential investors.

The enterprise governance market is a high growth market. Governance Director’s innovative business model seeks to provide customers cost effective tools to support them in improving organisational performance through better strategic governance. In the process we aim to capture value from the market. If you are an investor and would like to know more about Governance Director, we would be delighted to talk.

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If you would like further details on the company or wish to speak to one our consultants please contact us.

Governance Director press releases

Coming soon…

Our company culture is characterised by an open, friendly, supportive, fast-paced working environment with flexible working arrangements.

If you are thinking of making a move to a stimulating environment within the enterprise governance space, please send an email with a covering letter and your CV via the Contact page.

We're trying to get our team to start blogging  - but they're all up to their eyes in improving Governance Director and promoting it to the community....but come back soon, as we'll be kicking some - - - -  and you should see some interactivity here soon...

In short, Governance Director is an enterprise wide governance platform that includes and integrates organistational policies, processes, controls, decisions, issues and risks under an umbrella of an authority structure to approve and review these elements of an organisation's activities.

Governance Director will soon be releasing APIs for our interface, and encourages developers to link into the system. Please register your interest via the contact page and we’ll be in touch soon..

We work with partners to help push better governance to various communities. We work with our partners to create packages suitable to the market and their members and proactively work with them to create best practice policy, compliance, risk and decision templates that are relevant for their audience.

We are always keen to talk with prospective partners and explain how we can help you engage with your community, provide additional value to your offering and help instil best practice governance within your community.

Portals  |  Trade Associations  |  Chambers of Commerce  |  Compliance Officers |  Consultants  |  Magazines

We’re in the process of launching an affiliate marketing programme and would love to hear from interested parties who want to get involved promoting the Governance Director value to prospective customers. Watch this space!

PRIVACY POLICY for www.GovernanceDirector.com

At Governance Director, we are committed to ensuring and protecting your privacy at any time you are on our website or communicate electronically with our personnel. 

Our Privacy Policy is contained below and provides a detailed explanation as to how we may use your personal information provided to us or any we collect through legal means.

Updates of our Privacy Policy are completed frequently, thus you should peruse this Policy habitually.

1. Information We Collect from You

Data can be collected and processed when our website is in operation by you. The following are approved methods of collection:

1.1 If you register for information or complete a purchase, by filling out a form we can collect the information provided.

1.2 Traffic data, weblogs, location data, and any other communication can be collected.  These details come from your visit to our site and any resource tools you use while on the site.

1.3 Any communication on our website or to personnel allows us to collect information.

2. Use of Cookies

Circumstances may arise when we may need to gather information about your computer to help provide appropriate services or products to you.  The data gathered is solely statistical data, which may be shared with advertisers.

The facts collected about you are statistical only. No identifying information will be shared about our visitors and how they made use of our site.  No personal details will ever be shared.

Cookies are used to collect general online usage by using a cookie file.  If used this cookie file is downloaded without prompting.  It will be placed on your hard drive with information transferred to the hard drive allowing the cookies to be used for data collection.  A cookie is used to improve any services/ products, or overall website characteristic we offer you.

Any computer has the option to decline cookies.  Your web browser options include an “enable” button to decline cookies.  It is imperative that you understand by declining cookies you may be limiting your access to sections of our website.

If our advertisers use cookies it will result from a click on their advertisement, and we do not have control over their cookies if used. 

3. Use of Your Information

Information stored and collected about you allows us to improve our services or products for you.  Added to this parameter, we may use your information for the following purposes:

3.1 Any commitment we make on a contracted basis.

3.2 If information is requested from our website concerning services or products offered, we may use your data.  Products or services which may be of interest to you can also deem a communication from us, if permission has been granted.

3.3 Notification re- changes or improvements may be sent to you in regards to product or service changes that could affect our service to you.

3.4 Existing customers can be contacted on the topic of goods or services related to a previous sale, if we feel you might be interested in these additional topics.

3.5 Added use of your data may include permission for third parties to use your data.  This permission would be granted by you in regards to unrelated products or services that may be in your interests.  We or third parties can only contact you in regards to this information if consent has been provided for information collection.  

3.6 Third party contact or communications from our website, as a new customer, is only made if you have granted us permission.  These communications are only offered for information you consented to and no other unrelated information. 

3.7 Data that you do not want us to use or third parties to use can be withheld, once consent has been given regarding our collection of your data.  We will always provide you with an opportunity to decline communications and our or third party data usage.

3.8 Identifiable data, which could be used to disclose who you are, is never shared.  We only provide statistical related data about our visitors to third parties like advertisers to ensure your privacy.  

4. Storing Your Personal Data

4.1 Outside of the European Economic Area are places for storing and processing data we collect from you.  We may take advantage of these outside areas, allowing a staff to process data collected from you.  These processors may work for our suppliers.  The transfer of this data may include processing and completing your order on our site, such as utilising your payment information or offering support services.  We take all reasonable processes to ensure your data is secure and in agreement with our Privacy Policy as outlined here.

4.2 Secured servers are used by our company to ensure proper data storage.  Information on transactions is kept encrypted for safety measures.

4.3 Transmission of data on the internet can never be ultimately secure.  We do not and cannot guarantee security of information collected electronically or transmitted; however, we take all necessary steps to provide the best security available.  As a result of our inability to guarantee safety, you are submitting information to us at your own risk.  Where needed a password may be necessary to access areas of our site. You are responsible for the safety and confidentiality of the password you generate.  

5. Disclosing Your Information

 5.1 Personal information to third parties may be disclosed:

5.2 This disclosure occurs when we sell all or a section of our business or assets to a third party.

5.2.1 Personal information can be offered to any member of our company, such as subsidiaries, holding companies and their subsidiaries only if deemed appropriate.

5.2.2 Legal requirements may mean a sharing of your information.

5.2.3 Lowering credit risk and fraud protection may result in information disclosure.

6. Third Party Links

Links might be discovered on our site that belongs to third parties.  Any third party website on our site has a privacy policy. You should check their terms.  We do not accept liability or responsibility for their privacy policies, based on our lack of control over these third party links.  

7. Access to Information

The Data Protection Act 1998 was established to govern online electronic communications.  The act gives you access to any data we have about you.  To gain access to this information a small fee of £10 is needed.  This fee allows us to process your request by covering our costs.  Contact information is given below, which should be used to gain details about information we hold on you.  

8. Contacting Us

We welcome and hope you do not hesitate to make any queries, comments or requests you may have regarding this Privacy Policy.   Please contact us at info@GovernanceDirector.com.

Governance Director uses encoding and IP checking technology to protect your username and password information using both server authentication and data encryption, ensuring that your data is safe, secure, and available only to registered users in your organisation.

Governance Director provides each user in your organisation with a unique user name and password that must be entered each time a User logs on. Governance Director issues a session ‘cookie’ only to record encrypted authentication information for the duration of a specific session. The session ‘cookie’ does not include either the username or password of the user.

Click here for our Terms and Conditions

The Governance Director Knowledge Exchange provides organisations access to a number of pre-configured policy, compliance, risk and decision templates which can provide a helpful start to building better governance processes. Templates within the Knowledge Exchange are provided by experts, supported by case studies and references. These can be customised by an organisation as they see fit. 

Governance Director allows users to link to other relevant information online. Governance Director does not store documentation and will not be held responsible for links outside of the system.

Governance Director creates automated documentation from the system which can be printed and stored.

Users can turn decision projects into documented projects at a touch of a button – you’ll be able to customise reports and document all, or some aspects of the project  - imagine turning organisational decisions into decisions reports that can be sent to regulators and others at a touch of a button…

Governance Director allows users to collaborate, share knowledge, debate issues and arrive at group wise decisions. Users can be based anywhere around the world, collaborate anytime with others. Governance Director allows you to record your private notes and share them with others as and when you want – you’re in control.

Governance Director helps implement an enterprise-wide governance system, one which complements your corporate governance structures, processes and systems, to drive performance, rather than being about conformance.

Research on corporate failure and poor performance suggests there is a sequence to the process of corporate failure. The initial stages of failure are followed first by organisational and internal problems and later by financial signals that are common to the varying origins of failure.

Corporate governance as practiced today focuses on financial performance which is often too late in the process to affect organisational performance and reverse the demise of the organisation. Corporate governance is about conformance. It covers issues such as board structures and roles and executive remuneration. It has had significant coverage in recent years following the various corporate governance scandals and there will continue to be developments in this area. Codes and/or standards can generally address this dimension with compliance being subject to assurance/audit. There are also well-established oversight mechanisms for the board to use to ensure that good corporate governance processes are effective e.g., audit committees.

Strategic governance on the other hand focuses on a forward looking proactive approach. The strategic dimension focuses on strategy and value creation.
We define strategic governance as “the processes whereby decisions important to the future of an organisation are: taken; communicated; monitored; and assessed within acceptable risk and compliance boundaries”.

The focus is on helping the board to: make strategic decisions; understand its appetite for risk and its key drivers of performance, and; identify its key points of decision making. This does not lend itself easily to a regime of standards and audit. Nevertheless, there is a real need for directors to have a true and fair view of the strategic position of the company.

At the heart of strategic governance is the argument that good corporate governance on its own cannot make a company successful. Companies must balance conformance with performance.
 

Good governance must nurture and build genuine stakeholder trust

Building good governance must recognise the need for the development of genuine trust. This is different from the mere perception of trust.  Nurturing genuine trust means:

• Creating a climate of trust and candour amongst the various stakeholders;
• Fostering a culture of open dissent, which distinguishes constructive professional conflict from disloyalty;
• Using fluid portfolios to avoid typecasting individuals and to continue to challenge roles and assumptions;
• Ensuring individual accountability, including explicit task completion by directors;
• Providing clarity on what are the real strategic issues that need focus;
• Establishing clear processes for introducing strategic issues to the directors from management and stakeholders;
• Implementing clear processes for delegating the development of strategic responses on the directors’ behalf for both management and committees of the board.

Decision making at the heart of governance

Good governance enables organisations and individuals to make decisions efficiently, to make effective decisions, and to monitor and refine outcomes. Compliance and policies are important, but good decision making gives sustainable delivery. Organisations which avoid discussing governance end up addressing it over and over again, for each decision.

All organisations and programme / projects have governance. All forms of governance (even anarchy and its polar opposite, extreme bureaucracy) are useful in the right context. But if you don’t actively address it, governance tends to decay into inappropriate forms.

We define strategic governance as “the processes whereby decisions important to the future of an organisation are: taken; communicated; monitored; and assessed within acceptable risk and compliance boundaries”. This means that governance is about:

• Making decisions;
• The future;
• An organisation/enterprise;
• Impact of risks and compliance;
• What a body of people do about those decisions on the future of their enterprise.

Governance Directors helps implement enterprise-wide procative governance.

Much has been written about corporate governance and even more on strategy. Yet astonishingly there has been a missing link between enterprise strategy and enterprise governance, what we call strategic governance that has hitherto been ignored.

Strategic enterprise governance (a conjoined term of enterprise strategy and enterprise governance) is about achieving strategic alignment, organisational agility and shared purpose for sustained organisational performance (internally focused), whilst, ensuring compliance and transparency (externally focused).

Much of the focus for governance has been the latter; external facing activities, yet evidence suggest that having good governance which is internally facing and across the supply chain can dramatically improve enterprise performance.

The wider role of enterprise governance must include processes and systems for: decision making, strategy development, risk management and compliance and control. It must not only be about oversight but about insight and where learning forms a central part of the governance function. All three areas of oversight, insight and learning requires a record of what actions have occurred, by whom, and why, for this learning to happen.

Given the board is to a large extent the guardians of stakeholder funds; they need to govern the strategic direction of the organisation, in a manner that delivers maximum return on the stakeholder funds. Typically stakeholder is replaced by shareholder in the majority of private sector profit driven firms. Boards to date have taken this governance role to be largely about financial governance and that mainly in the context of conformance – ensuring that shareholders funds are properly accounted for, normally covering executive remuneration, financial audits, anti-corruption measures and ensuring compliance against regulations.

However, this does not fulfil the broader mandate of the board, which must be about driving performance of the organisation. To do this requires a very different approach towards policy, strategy, decision making, enterprise risk management, executive engagement and performance oversight. Strategic enterprise governance integrates the elements of good enterprise decision making, risk management and compliance. It requires a redefinition of the role of the board, a governance structure that is dynamic and relevant to changing environments and matrix management structures. It requires tools and techniques that align strategy with performance, the board with operations and stakeholders to the vision. It needs to hold people to account, yet drive creativity. It needs to provide enterprise oversight, but more importantly insight.

Beyond its legal and fiduciary duties, the purpose of a board is to create value more effectively over time than the executive of the company could do on its own. In practice this means making continual judgements about the direction of the business, in particular assessing recommendations for transformational actions, to ensure the good custody of its assets despite the inevitable pressures and cycles of disruption the business will encounter.
 

An enterprise maximises its strategic value by ensuring that all of its operating elements are in harmony - this is called strategic alignment. An enterprise sustains this alignment through a management process called strategic governance.

Strategic alignment and strategic governance are keys to ensuring the enterprise is fully exploiting opportunities and managing risks in an evolving market.

As global markets and extended enterprises become increasingly intertwined and complex, making strategic decisions by relying solely on "gut" feel or past experience can put an organisation at tremendous risk. Transparency into how a decision was made and why becomes increasingly important not only to dissect past mistakes, but to learn and evolve from successful decisions.

Governance Director helps achieve strategic alignment, organisational agility and shared purpose for sustained organisational performance - whilst - ensuring compliance and transparency. Governance Director complements your corporate governance structures and system to provide a holistic enterprise-wide governance system that can drive performance.

Optimised decisions share some common characteristics: they’re transparent and decision makers are accountable; the environment is accurately understood; changes in assumptions and course of action are rapid; decision makers consider a diversity of opinions; and there's a way to capture and learn from best/worst decision practices. 

However, decision making in most organisations today is a manual and disconnected process, lacking transparency. In the wake of a string of disastrous decisions leading to the current global economic crisis, there will likely be more pressure for regulations and on executives for greater scrutiny and accountability over how organisations make decisions, assess and manage risks and ensure continuance compliance — all of which will go beyond corporate reporting and disclosure.

Governance Director delivers a strategic dashboard that provides a simple unifying analytical framework for strategic governance - ensuring the right decisions are made involving the right people, ensuring decisions are aligned with the vision, ensuring decision making has risk assessment at its heart, ensuring decision validity and benefits realisation is tested over time.

The Governance Director Strategic Dashboard provides a simple unifying analytical framework for strategic governance, delivering real strategic insight. 

A single, consolidated view of all your disparate decisions, risks and compliance activities.

By providing staff with a real-time snapshot of performance, potential issues can be identified and dealt with more quickly than ever before.

View the most relevant information, in the right amount of detail, in an easy-to-understand, graphical format, enabling you to immediately see where the issues lie and distribute them to the relevant staff.

With just a couple of clicks of the mouse, you can immediately drill-down to get to the root cause of business issues. 

Get all the management and governance information required to drive performance and ensure conformance across the enterprise.

It is disconcerting when everyone is doing something unique in a silo. There is no re-use, customisation rages across different departments. Managing everything on a granular micro-managerial level is just not practical in this day and age. 

Governance is about specifying who has the input rights, who is accountable and who approves enterprise inititaives without compromising creatiivity and flexibity.

Enterprise acitivies should not be made in a vacuum. Governance Director enables stakeholders to collaborate on enterprise acitivities, with automated alerts and reminders to engage stakeholder through an easy to use workflow.

Governance Director also enables an organisation to re-use / review and reflect on past decisions, including the decision criteria, hierarchy, options and pertinent information that can aid in making quicker, better decisions next time round.