Governance Documents – creating a ‘Common Language’ for Corporate Governance

In the first article in this series (here) I described why ensuring consistent information about how the business is operated and what standards are expected to be met is part of the ‘common language’ required for effective corporate governance and why it is essential to safe and efficient business operations. Establishing and communicating a simple governance document hierarchy in your organisation supports better corporate governance by creating a shared understanding of the key tools used to embed corporate culture, establish strategic priorities, maintain business operations and to control risks. Every business function and discipline in your organisation should have a suite of high quality, plain English governance documents which describe how they operate and are easy to locate by any business user who needs them. The key to using any heuristic approach is to understand that you are creating a mental model for business users – a set of simple mental shortcuts that allows […]