Finding room for improvement in a well-run ship

Background
Northern College is an adult education establishment with residential accommodation in South Yorkshire. Principal/Chief Executive Emma Beal had been in post a year, having joined the college four years previously, and wanted to commission an external governance review.

Prior to this, annual reviews had been carried out internally by the highly respected Clerk to the Governors, Sarah Johnson, who was leaving after 12 years in post. From the external organisations who pitched for the work, Sarah chose Action Planning. 

Brief
Action Planning was commissioned to carry out a Periodic External Governance Review. Emma was keen for a delivery that struck a balance of getting to the issues but not labouring the point too much and taking up too much time. David Saint took the brief.

Process
David began by reviewing the most recent governance self-assessment, and from this he developed a set of interview questions. He then held individual Zoom interviews with all the Governors, all the members of the Executive team and Sarah the Clerk.

We place great importance on the interviews. While they contain a number of standard questions, they are also conversational in style, allowing for honest exploration of issues and topics that are front-of-mind for each interviewee.

David reviewed the core governance documentation, including the governing document, relevant Terms of Reference and policies, samples of agendas and minutes. Finally, he observed a Board or Committee meeting, before writing up and presenting his report.

Outcome
David’s report concluded that governance at Northern College is in extremely good health, that Board members are highly engaged, and that they are doing an excellent job of meeting their responsibilities. It then went into detail about numerous aspects of the Board and executive team, such as the balance between governance and management, the volume and clarity of Board papers, the role of the Clerk, engagement with students and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. The report concluded with 14 recommendations.

“The report that came back chimed with how I would identify our governance,” said Emma. “There were no surprises. I would have gone into this saying our governance is strong, although I think there are some challenges that aren’t easily solved, eg the amount of information that governors are having to digest.

“The timing has worked out well for us. Sarah is leaving and we can use the report as the basis for the new Clerk’s work – a really good stock take of the organisation. I’m quite comfortable that there is enough in there to take forward.”

Consultant’s insight
One of the things that struck me about this assignment was the amount of detailed work that Governors have to undertake in their role. The College reports to, and is scrutinised by, multiple stakeholders, and whilst the brunt of this is borne by the Executive Team, Governors have to get very involved as well. The first ‘headline observation’ in our report, therefore, read: “The role of Governor of Northern College has been and continues to be very demanding. Early on in the process we came to the opinion that this review should mostly explore how to reduce workload, rather than create more hoops for Governors to jump through.”

As a consultant you feel you need to come up with lots of recommendations, and lots of action points the client can (hopefully) pick up and run with. Our clear view that developed in this assignment was that the opposite was called for here. Governors were highly committed and involved, and one of the best ways to improve governance would be to find ways of reducing their workload, so that the role was more sustainable, more enjoyable, and so that there was the brain-space for strategic, future-focussed, developmental thinking, as well as the genuinely essential day-to-day detail of governance.