Good governance starts with the right questions
We have all seen this, a programme that has a full calendar of governance in place and still misses its most important decisions, deliverables, milestones and outcomes.
Reports are produced. Risks are logged. Steering groups meet. Yet the trade-offs that determine whether the programme succeeds remain unresolved.
In my experience, good governance depends on two things that are easy to overlook when designing structures and reporting cycles. The content being discussed, and the attention people give it.
Are we putting the right information in front of the right people? And are they examining it closely enough to make informed decisions?
The Association for Project Management describes governance in terms of authority and accountability for project outputs, outcomes and benefits. It also emphasises clear responsibilities, delegated authority and effective escalation routes. These are practical foundations for getting work delivered.
The challenge is making those foundations work in practice.
Too much governance and too little oversight
I have seen projects where governance meetings occupied a day and a half every week.
That is a significant commitment before allowing for preparation, reporting and follow-up. It also leaves less time for the people attending those meetings to do the work being discussed.
Despite that investment, important trade-off decisions were being missed. The project had plenty of discussion, but insufficient attention on the choices affecting delivery.
This is how an organisation can have too much governance activity and too little effective oversight at the same time.
A useful test for any governance meeting is straightforward. What decision does this forum exist to make, and does it have the information and authority to make it?
Some meetings will focus on assurance or coordination rather than approvals. Even then, their purpose should be clear. Repeatedly reviewing the same updates without resolving issues is a reason to reconsider the approach.
Making the consequences of decisions visible
One of the most important jobs of governance is to make trade-offs explicit.
When a deadline comes under pressure, teams may look for work they can defer until after that deadline. That can be a reasonable choice. A phased implementation may allow an organisation to secure benefits earlier while managing the remaining work.
But there is a substantial difference between a planned phase and an unresolved problem being pushed back, potentially even beyond go-live.
Before agreeing to defer work, leaders need to ask:
- What exactly are we leaving out?
- Does anything else depend on it?
- What impact or risk does that create on the programme’s ability to deliver
- What impact or risk does that create for the business at launch?
- Who will complete the work afterwards, with what budget and capacity?
- How much will pushing this back cost the programme and the business versus the alternatives
- Will the change reduce or delay the expected benefits?
Without those questions, a decision presented as an acceleration can become a more expensive route to completion.
Work left unfinished may have to be addressed while the business is also managing operational problems, supporting users and correcting defects. The original task remains, with additional demands around it.
Good governance makes those consequences visible before the decision is taken.
Paying attention to the critical path
A programme can have every expected committee and reporting process while still lacking a clear understanding of what determines its completion date.
The critical path is the sequence of dependent activities that determines the earliest possible finish. A delay to an activity on that path will affect completion unless the team can recover the time elsewhere.
That makes it essential governance territory.
Leaders should understand which activities currently determine the delivery date, where dependencies are vulnerable and whether shared resources can meet competing demands.
Asking whether everything is “on track” rarely provides enough information.
Better questions include:
- Which dependency is most likely to move our completion date?
- What evidence supports the current forecast?
- Where do we need a decision to prevent a delay?
- Can we retain the agreed scope within the available time and resources?
- If we cannot, what options require approval?
And be aware of “near critical paths” as these can result in an impact or delay, even if the critical path activities are fine.
The purpose is to give leaders enough understanding to intervene where their decisions will make a difference.
Similar programmes can produce very different results
I once led one of two sister programmes within the same organisation.
They involved the same stakeholders, shared resources and had the same core supplier. They both had similar governance, processes and hierarchies. The programme I led also had more suppliers and a broader scope to manage, alongside challenges with stakeholder engagement.
The sister programme experienced delays and multiple changes of programme manager.
The programme I led delivered, tracked the benefits being realised and exceeded the expected benefits. The CFO described it as the best-run programme in the organisation (at the time).
I share this not to brag, rather to show how the subtleties make a big difference in outcome. The comparison does not prove that governance alone explained the different outcomes. Programmes have their own circumstances, and leadership changes can be both a cause and a consequence of delivery difficulties.
For me, however, the experience reinforced the importance of asking the right questions consistently and creating an environment of trust where issues can be raised without blame and discussed for resolution and improvement. Familiar stakeholders and an established supplier do not remove the need to examine assumptions, challenge forecasts and resolve competing priorities.
It also reinforced why benefits need attention throughout delivery. A completed implementation is a milestone. The business still needs to know whether its investment is producing the intended results.
Accountability needs honest reporting
The way leaders respond to difficult information shapes the information they receive next time.
If raising a concern leads immediately to blame, people have a reason to soften the message or wait until they have a solution. That can leave decision-makers with an increasingly incomplete picture.
Amy Edmondson’s research into 51 work teams found an association between psychological safety and learning behaviour. The study supports the importance of an environment where people can ask questions, discuss mistakes and raise concerns.
Applied to governance, that means combining clear accountability with constructive challenge.
When something goes wrong, leaders should establish what happened, what the impact is and what needs to change. They should also ask whether responsibilities were clear, whether warnings were heard and whether decisions were made in time.
Replacing an individual may sometimes be necessary. It will not, by itself, correct unclear priorities, unresolved resource conflicts or a reporting culture that discourages honesty.
The next governance review should therefore examine more than the meeting schedule and reporting pack. Look at the decisions being made, the issues remaining unresolved and the evidence receiving attention.
A useful place to start is with one question.
What do we need to understand or decide today to improve the programme’s chances of success?
