Organisation to organisation, Governance can often vary significantly, being associated with financials, reporting, resource management and even investment management. Often it’s in place to ensure teams do what they’re supposed to do.
Governance means different things to different people. There is no single definition that will align to everyone’s view or opinions.
Now that’s a very lengthy description. Let’s just simplify it!
‘Governance is all processes that coordinate and control an organisation’s resources and actions including but not limited to finances, ethics, resource-management, accountability and management controls.’
Governance implemented incorrectly can often result in political battles, stress, miscommunication and wastes a lot of time.
What should organisations do about governance?
Governance is often used for oversight to prevent people from doing the wrong thing. Why do people do the wrong things and need to be controlled?
When systems and processes are poorly designed, people do the wrong things and oversight is needed to catch them out doing something ‘wrong’. Then ensures there are measures to correct the wrongs.
In many cases, governance has been implemented in a narrow and rigid way often as oversight through often long, arduous steering committees, audits and meetings. Not to mention convoluted approval processes that are far too rigid and sometimes not practical or pragmatic.
How do we improve the way organisations do governance?
Use a more systematic approach that enables people to do the right thing, first time and reduces unnecessary overheads. It sets clear direction and supports empowering behaviours by teams, ensures those teams are controlled and well-coordinated. There is no requirement for ‘policing’. It’s also more cost effective.
So, what is it that helps support a systematic approach to its implementation?
A Project Management Office (PMO) that’s what! A PMO developed and managed well is an effective governance body supporting the systematic approach required to achieve quality and control. Setting expectations upfront, ensuring adequate resourcing and allowing the PMO to manage its ‘customers’ can be a very effective and efficient option.
A PMO can help drive consistency and alignment to executive demands like standardisation and reporting, ensuring it gets done first time and gets done right.
Summary
In summary using a systematic approach to governance, not only makes good business sense but also helps ensure people naturally do things the right way, the first time. Using a PMO is good to help manage this is good for business. PMO’s can remove the overload of unnecessary meetings, complex processes that exist for the sake of process and ensure Projects are managed in a controlled efficient manner.
To find out if your organisation is full of governance bloat, check out our article on this very issue so you can identify to fix it!