Julia Unwin of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and long time advocate for good governance, recently made a speech at an Association of Chairs event at which she highlighted 4 D’s of change that board, committees, trustees and directors should all pay attention to.
I wasn’t at the event, so I won’t presume on what Julia will have said, but those 4 D’s are worth spending a few moments on. If you’re involved in the governance and leadership of an organisation it would be worth you considering them too before deciding their relevance to yourselves and your next steps.
The 4 D’s are:
Devolution
Deficit
Demographics
Digital
Devolution recently this has become very relevant, as Greater Lincolnshire (amongst others) has taken a new step on the devolution path. With the possibility of new ways of working across a larger the geographical area of Greater Lincolnshire in the years ahead, charities, organisations and their boards need to be considering how this may affect them. It’s no longer a distant possibility. So how does this affect you? Are you discussing this during your board meetings? Should you be?
The national deficit and the government approach to spending and saving is quite clearly having impacts on everything from our beneficiaries and clients and their needs, to our funding models, to the contracts and commissions available to our organisations and our sector. But you already know that. This is an external environmental factor that boards and trustees should be taking into account as part of their strategic leadership. Perhaps you already are. But it is an important approach to governance to sometimes take a step back and review these external factors and take them into account as part of forward strategic thinking.
I’m looking at the D of demographics for a moment in terms of demographics and diversity of our boards and committees. Ensuring the board is representative of the demographic mix of the people we work with can be important. But sometimes it can be useful to include some diversity into our boards to ensure that new opinions, outlooks or perspectives are brought into the mix. I’m particularly thinking here about a younger demographic – perhaps of people aged 18-24. The inclusion of younger people onto boards and committees is very poor, both nationally and locally. How are you and your board working with younger people? Are they included?
(VANEL has recently been awards Big Lottery funding to run a “Young Leaders” project to connect younger people with trustee boards (amongst other things), so you’ll hear more about this soon and see elsewhere in this issue).
Finally, Digital – a subject to which I refer regularly. Websites, cloud tools, social media, mobile technology, apps and more. Digital is everywhere and it is both a challenge and an opportunity for each and every charity and community organisation. So again, what are the digital and technological issues for you and your board? Do you have the right skills to call upon? Who is leading on technology from within your board? Do you know how to benefit from technology to improve the way you work or are you barely keeping your head above water?
So thank you Julia for a reminder of some large issues that we should all be aware of in our boards and committees. Take some time to consider them appropriately.
Article by Karl Elliott. Originally published in the VANEL “View from the Top” monthly e-newsletter, issue 02.
Each month “The View from the Top” e-newsletter is sent for free to charity trustees, directors and committee board members who have subscribed. To subscribe your organisation needs to be a Member or Friend of VANEL. Find out more on the www.viewfromthetop.org.uk website.