Generative Governance

The Generative Board

It is often understood that the purpose of the board or governing body is oversight of performance and compliance. Performance is measured as achievement against strategic milestones and annual business plan objectives, while compliance is about the laws of the land and regulatory requirements.

However , you may have noticed Australians have had a great opportunity to reflect on our values over the past 5 years. Whether we have taken this learning opportunity is quite another matter.

Six Royal Commissions and then another into criminal convictions just announced by the Victorian Government . The High Court noted “… the prosecution of each convicted person was corrupted in a manner which debased fundamental premises of the criminal justice system.”

1. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse(2013–2017)
2. Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption(2014–2015)
3. Royal Commission into Family Violence (2015- 2016). (Vic)
4. Royal Commission into the Child Protection and Youth Detention Systems of the Government of the Northern Territory (2016–2017)
5. Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry (2017–present)
6. Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (2018- present)

These are failures of governing. When politicians are telling us how much they are doing to protect our way of life we hear a lot about Australian values. Well it seems our way of life includes destroying value for others.

Australian values in action have been shown to damage our fellow Australians across generations.

The destruction of value

The destruction of Australian lives and quality of life has been shown through:

• Sexual exploitation of the most vulnerable children
• Physical and psychological abuse of children in detention systems
• Family related murder and violence
• Financial institution theft, greed, delay and denial of just claims

With further investigations into the abuse of aged Australians and the Victorian police undermining our criminal justice system, we are sure to see more lost executives and governing bodies hang their collectively heads.

How is this so?

“Values can be positive, or they can be potentially limiting. For example, the positive value of ‘trust’ is fundamental for creating a cohesive group culture. On the other hand, the potentially limiting value of ‘being liked’ can cause people to compromise their integrity in order to satisfy their need for connection.”

-Richard Barrett, The Importance of Values in Building a High Performance Culture

We forget that for any particular worldview there are values that are both positive and negative, community enhancing and community destroying. Nailing our values on the wall and telling people they have to live by them doesn’t work, it never has and never will.

Governance has demonstrably failed when organisation behaviour leads to value destruction in the community.

Generative Governance

The generative board acts to oversight performance, compliance and worldview learning. This board wants to know both sides of the value coin (value creation and value destruction) and in their board calendar adopts learning practices specifically for worldview challenges.

Generative governing

• Values learning through curiosity about the subjective
• Demands personal learning and growth
• Reframes the logic of the current thinking
• Draws on principles of double loop learning
• Reframes the ethical references
• Enables inclusion
• Reframes errors, failures, mistakes, complaints and risk red flags for structured learning
• Works to understand the human ways of being
• Adopts intellectual humility
• Practices Humble Inquiry

What evidence of learning and growth will be seen from the above practices?

• New language
• New assumptions
• New ways of being
• New behaviour
• Different goals
• Different ethical frames
• Different definitions of failure, error and risk
• Different definitions of value creation and destruction
• Different definitions of success and shareholder value

Our approach to governing can remind us we are human, capture the value in our hands while uplifting our community and creating joy in us.

BRAKTEN CONSULTING will help you articulate your values, build generative governing and bring to light your personal narrative for the business, connect to the values of your people, and assist in aligning workplace values with the aspirations of your workforce.