The challenges in effective governance

On 9th May the APM Governance Interest Network once again put the collective membership’s brain to work to tackle some of the Barriers to Effective Governance raised in the previous webinar back in February: What are the barriers to effective governance?

As always, it’s easy to come up with the challenges from experience, and much more difficult to pinpoint what to do about them. In this month’s session, we gleaned the experience and advice from over 50 project professionals, the highlights of which are outlined below.

Governance starts and ends with people

Governance is ultimately about decision-making, and decision-making is a fundamental part of professional life. Therefore, it’s natural that many people want to have a role in decision-making for projects, sometimes creating unnecessary complexity. The group focussed heavily on the need to empower and delegate decision-making at different levels within an organisation, assessing the difference and value added at each level. Within this, the group challenged project leadership capability — are the people sponsoring, directing, managing a project the right people? Are they competent and taking the role seriously? Defining where accountability and responsibility for project shaping and delivery is crucial.

Governance requires a reliable flow of information

A large part of the discussion centred on communication, and it’s more dialogic friend, engagement. From understanding the strategic direction of an organisation, to understanding the purpose of the meeting you are attending, effective governance requires those involved in governing to know their role, the organisational context, and understand the decisions and consequences of what is being asked of them. Fostering collaborative working between different teams and organisations helps support the flow of information, and if led effectively, provides a constructive environment in which to challenge as well as support decision-making. Where there is wider organisational resistance to the change brought about by projects, the group discussed ways to involve governance boards in resolving resistance-related issues.

Effective governance is built in from the outset

The group discussed the various project lifecycle methodologies, and the associated decision-making frameworks that might accompany them, which of course documents the governance structure in Terms of Reference (ToR) and Project Initiation Documents (PID). Upfront planning of governance processes and resources were highlighted, for example costing in the overhead required for governance board commitments, and specifying a governance coordination role on a project.

Governance is a collective responsibility

It can be difficult not to try to boil the ocean when considering how to address the barriers to effective governance — after all, governance is arguably the central tenet of project management. Therefore, my final thought when reflecting on the group’s input was to consider what you as an individual project professional can control, and what can simply be influenced through your role. The final principle espoused by the Interest Network in this month’s webinar was to consider and align with existing governance structures within the sponsoring organisation — project governance is most effective when it works with the grain to enhance existing decision-making frameworks, rather than attempting to cut across them.

How do we bring this to life?

It’s clear that there are two dimensions to the collective advice that the Governance Interest Network can gather and share: There are the key principles of effective governance, and work to update the publication “Directing Change” is currently underway. The second dimension is providing situational advice tailored to specific contexts — what to do if you find yourself in specific circumstances. It's this aspect that will form the basis of the third and final webinar in this series.