Outsourcing Governance: 4 things to ask yourself

In this series of blogs, Paul Hart, IBM, shares his observations and thoughts on outsourcing governance to consider during your next governance meeting.

The trap of too many meetings is one I come across frequently. I was once on a project, where I was struck by the negative attitude the management team had towards governance. It was so obviously a chore, a never ending cycle of meetings for which they had little enthusiasm or derived any benefit other than the satisfaction of getting through a purportedly burdensome task unscathed.

I have myself experienced the frustrations of meeting overload from the provider side. I once worked on a project where I was told that I couldn’t have a meeting with a group of managers for many weeks to discuss a governance issue. I was told that “everyone is too busy in back to back meetings all day, every day”.

So, forgive me for singing the familiar tune of ‘back to basics’ but if you find yourself stuck in a series of perpetual meetings, my advice to you is to remind yourself of what you’re actually trying to achieve. There isn’t an ‘off the shelf’ answer to that, but based on my many years of experience here are a few questions which can help you gain that perspective and make your governance process operate more effectively.

1 Administration – who is responsible for all governance related administration? Are all inputs, minutes and outputs lodged centrally? Are your meetings locked down in your calendar months ahead? Is the meeting calendar published and are the logistics planned and updated regularly? Re-scheduling of meetings wreaks havoc for maintaining a focused agenda with the right attendees.

2 Preparation – Are you always briefed well before meetings? Ideally the meeting agenda and supporting information should be with you a couple of days beforehand as a pre-read providing you with the opportunity to absorb the salient facts and prepare any groundwork. A healthy approach can also be for client and service provider to reach agreement on what options are to be discussed, before a meeting.

3 Agenda & Attendees – Does the meeting agenda reflect business priorities? Are all outstanding actions and decisions clearly identified? Is the right information readily available and in the right format to enable clear decisions? Are options on the table? One of my peers recently remarked to me that his latest governance session had been, “a slow death by presentation material”. Are the right people attending the meetings? Roles, responsibilities and decision making rights should be clearly defined to ensure appropriate empowerment of individuals and their counterparts.

4 Meeting discipline – Do people turn up on time, or at all? Are meetings conducted in an orderly and productive manner? Are jointly agreed minutes taken and subsequently published? Are decisions and agreed actions directed at those who need to know?

Addressing these points will help any team move forward and make governance meetings more productive and powerful.