Mean What You Say - A Foundation for Good Governance

A great deal has been written about what makes for Good Governance.  This is a topic of interest for organizations in every industry and geography, profit and non-profit.  I have written about this a little bit before in my blogs: the importance of having a strong risk culture and the Role Tone at the Top Plays.  Good Governance means having a strong risk culture, reinforced by the organization’s leadership team.  As the adage goes, this isn’t just about saying what you mean but meaning what you say.  To motivate an organization, leaders should not only say “do the right things”, they must lead by doing the right things, and reinforce their message that everyone should do the right things.

One of the easiest steps that leaders can take to demonstrate that they mean what they say and to reinforce their message that everyone should do the right things is to actively pay attention to the organization’s outstanding issues.  Issues arise in the normal course of business in every organization.  Sometimes issues are raised by internal and external auditors and regulators but often they are self-identified by managers such as Operations, Legal, Compliance, and Risk Management.  When leaders track issues they better understand where they need to remove barriers to success, allocating limited resources to solve problems on a prioritized basis.  When leadership shows that they are monitoring the issues faced by their management team and that they have a keen interest in their resolution, guess what? Managers throughout the organization pay a lot more attention to resolving issues in a timely manner.  Issues don’t accumulate, get stale, or, get sometimes forgotten.  The volume of Audit and regulatory findings decline and dreaded repeat findings never occur.

Of all of the Archer use cases an organization can implement, Issues Management may be the easiest and most impactful.  If your organization does not actively manage its issues, I encourage you to learn more about Archer Issue Management and enjoy this fun video!