Governance under review and changes on the way

In my last blog, I said that “governance is not a topic that captures the headlines, unless something goes wrong.” That remains true. But what I’ve learned is that although governance doesn’t often make headlines, there is great interest among members in this topic and the engagement we get when we talk about it is really positive.

Therefore, I’m very happy to provide another update on the progress of our governance review project.

As a reminder, we launched this work at the end of 2019, under the “Agile CIOB” theme in the Corporate Plan. We are looking to future-proof our governance and adopt best practice where it’s worked for similar organisations.

Our CEO, Caroline Gumble, gave the most recent update in November – here’s a link to her message. Since then, we have had meetings of the Working Group and various Boards and Committees and I would like to thank everyone for their participation to date – with a special note of thanks to the Working Group and its Chair, Chris Soffe.

At the Board of Trustees meeting last month, it was noted that the general view [of the Working Group] was that project implementation was moving forward at the correct pace and we were currently on timetable for completion in June 2021.

The Board of Trustees spent time discussing the new role of Chair of the Board of Trustees, one of the main changes to come out of the review, and a direction of travel to enable the drafting of some Bye-Law changes.

The other key piece of work we are getting underway is the process to talk to and engage with our Hub members on amending the Hub Regulations. The goal is to provide an over-arching governance framework but with flexibility introduced at the local Hub Level.

Looking ahead a little, there is a still work to do and we will continue to provide updates as and when there is progress to report. As mentioned, we are on track with our timetable and changes will be in place to take effect from our next Governance year, June 2021. Until then, all existing governance arrangements continue as is.

As a reminder, the overarching goal under the Corporate Plan is to review and improve the governance and decision making process. Without a strong foundation of good governance, we won’t be able to build upon the values and ideas we have and the good work being done by my colleagues across the Institute and our members across the world.