Governance: why making your own rules matters

In any transformation, you need to set your own rules. Any Programme Leader worth their salt will want to be involved in setting the governance criteria and content, ensuring they’ve brought reason and rigour to the expectations placed on the programme. But I believe it goes beyond that obvious and logical I-don’t-break-the-rules-I-make transaction: it has much deeper psychological and emotional components. For me, these are:

1.    These are not just your rules. In agreeing the governance criteria with the business, you’ve psychologically bought-into the business’s aims. That often includes committing to massive challenges, like tight deadlines and ambitious multi-project working. You haven’t just said you’ll do it; you’ve promised yourself you’ll do it.

2.    You’ve agreed the rules on behalf of others. When you suggested or agreed to certain criteria, you committed on behalf of your team: because you believed this team had the potential to deliver against these demands. You are now obliged to support them to achieve the standards set. You’re the cheerleader on their (winning) side.

3.    You need to know you’re winning. Without the rigour of good governance, you can’t know if you’re ahead of the curve, running to catch up or already standing on the podium. At the end, you can’t know if you’ve done a good job, learned any valuable lessons, or have been valued by the people around you. So without rigorous governance, there’s no job satisfaction.

I believe that governance setting should be viewed as a leadership exercise in its fullest sense. Yes, you’ll be promising the business some tangible delivery and practical outcomes. But that’s not the end of it. You’ll also need to think more broadly about how you’ll be contributing to improved inter-team performance; the personal performance of yourself and your team members; and the overall quality of the organisation. Governance is first about hitting the targets – and then about targeting the hits.