As CEO’s, Managing Directors, Executive Leaders and Board Members, we have many years of experience seeing the role of Governance in organizations as the process of providing strategic leadership to an organization. Governance entails the functions of setting direction, making policy and strategic decisions, overseeing and monitoring organizational performance, and ensuring overall accountability.
In working with one of our Board of Advisors, Dr. Richard Chait (Harvard Professor Emeritus), we have adopted a more enlightened definition in our work with organizations that looks at Governance as Leadership in the context of three types of governance: fiduciary, strategic and generative:
Fiduciary Mode – where boards are concerned primarily with the stewardship of tangible assets: key question — “How are we doing?“
Strategic Mode – where boards create a strategic partnership with management: key questions — “What are we doing?” “Where are we going?” and,
Generative Mode – where boards provide a less recognized but critical source of leadership for the organization: key questions — “Why are we doing this?” “What are the possibilities?”
In our work with Boards Of Directors, we help them re-assess the true mission, purpose and vision of the organization moving then into a strategic branding discussion where the Generative possibilities are addressed in Task Forces in partnership with Executive Leadership.
See: “Governance as Leadership” by Richard Chait, William Ryan, and Barbara Taylor written by G. Douglass Lewis.