Policy Governance® - Creating effective corporate boards

The standards demanded of corporate bodies get ever higher. The informal, perhaps "moderately anarchic" board procedures (as Sir Adrian Cadbury¹ describes them) that many UK organisations have been familiar and comfortable with in the past, do not meet the modern insistence on accountability, transparency and compliance.

Boards must now meet both a more complex regulatory regime in many markets and an increasing public (often media-driven) interest in the morality and ethics of the organisation. There is much greater demand for accountability around both the ends and the means used to achieve them. Customer demands are now influenced by a whole range of pre-occupations and issues which have to be recognised and taken on board by the organisations serving them. Everybody has to know what they are doing - the theory and the practice have to be rooted in a coherent concept that can be taught, applied and monitored.

We call this concept 'Policy Governance®' and it follows the model developed and defined by John and Miriam Carver² as

"an integrated set of concepts and principles that describes the job of any governing board".

The Carver model is "a collection of principles and concepts that make sense as a whole".

M-A-C Aims and Approach
M-A-C aims to work with and transform boards in non-profit and for-profit organisations in both the public and private sectors by developing an approach to governance that will:

Assist a Board to create value
Give an understanding of the difference between 'governance' and 'management'
Create Boards that are a strong link in the chain of authority that delivers operational results
Clarify 'ownership' - accountability to shareholder, members or the wider public
Help Boards delegate authority in a way that strengthens board control and management empowerment simultaneously
Separate clearly the role of the Board/Chair and the Senior Management Team/Chief Executive Officer
Separate issues of organisational purpose (ENDS) from all other organisational issues (MEANS)

M-A-C Menu
Valerie Moore is a graduate of the Policy Governance® Academy and a member of the Board of the Policy Governance® Association (UK) the organisation founded in March 2006 to take forward this approach. The Academy is delivered by John and Miriam Carver to selected students who can demonstrate an understanding of the issues involved and have an experience of governance and the issues raised in being a member of a Board.

Valerie will be assisted by the other M-A-C partners in installing the Policy Governance® Model through a set of exercises and workshops.

The project will consist of :

Diagnostic Interview - we meet Board members and key members of the senior management team to assess the current organisational environment, issues and needs in the governance/ management area. The information collected will be fed into the content and structure of
Two workshops
- Introduction to the Policy Governance® Model for fulfilling the accountabilities of Board leadership.
- Blitz Policy Development Session where participants move from the abstract model to formulating their own concrete board policies. This second workshop will last two days and will explore Means under the headings "Governance Process, Board-Staff Linkage" and "Executive Limitations".
Developing Ends - the question of Ends is essentially for the Board themselves and this work can be done as part of the supervised sessions or privately by the Board as part of a corporate strategic planning session.
Monitoring Compliance Workshop - this concluding learning session will review the policies developed and explore the means of monitoring them - who should do? How should they do them? What does a monitoring report look like? What action must be taken when monitoring uncovers non-compliance with policy or implementation?
Project Review - the project team will together review the exercise as a whole and confirm the understanding of the model, its implementation and effect. This meeting will take place after a period of time (no less than 6 months) to let the policies settle in and after one round at least of monitoring.

Board Software Support
In conjunction with the Policy Governance® services we are now offering to boards, M-A-C is pleased to announce that we are the first UK authorised supplier of OurBoardroom™, an Internet based application designed to optimise board and organisational performance. Boards using Policy Governance® and OurBoardroom™ can expect dramatic improvements in:

overall organisational performance
board and chief executive accountability
responsible delegation of authority
board monitoring and assessment of chief executive performance
communications between ownership, board, and organisation
board self evaluation
board operational support including workflow facilitation
compliance with governance codes

If you are interested in discussing what OurBoardroom™ can do for your board, please contact Colin Adamson at the Partnership or Ray Tooley (at / www.ourboardroom.com). We would be happy to arrange an online demonstration of the system.

Project Implementation and Costs for the complete Policy Governance® Package
A M-A-C Partner would be designated as your key project contact with other partners brought in as required for the project programme. The level of support you need will be defined and costed for each engagement with or without the software.