28 Feb Building Board Confidence in Executive Governance
Posted at 12:54h
in Effective Board Bulletin, Board Performance & Development, Management Team, Running the Board, Strategy
| Boards have to rely on executive-level governance. In fact, it’s difficult for a board to work effectively without it. Non-executives can’t have constant insight into how accountability, controls, checks balances, decision-making etc work; they have to be able to rely on all of this working well at the level below. So they need to have confidence that executive governance is sound.
Yet we often find during our board effectiveness reviews that the Board’s knowledge of how executive governance is working is quite limited. That can result in the Board being pulled down into the executive level, as NEDs try to build confidence by doing their own digging. |
In mature organisations, executive governance usually works fairly well, so it doesn’t take much to give the Board the confidence it needs. Here are a few suggested good practices to follow – along with problems to avoid.