{"id":11479,"date":"2016-08-04T13:18:59","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T12:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/?p=11479"},"modified":"2016-08-04T13:18:59","modified_gmt":"2016-08-04T12:18:59","slug":"the-4-ds-of-good-governance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/2016\/08\/the-4-ds-of-good-governance\/","title":{"rendered":"The 4 D’s of Good Governance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julia Unwin<\/a> of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation<\/a>, and long time advocate for good governance, recently made a speech at an Association of Chairs event<\/a> at which she highlighted 4 D’s of change that board, committees, trustees and directors should all pay attention to.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The 4 D’s are:
\nDevolution
\nDeficit
\nDemographics
\nDigital<\/strong><\/p>\n

Devolution <\/strong>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.\u00a0 It’s no longer a distant possibility.\u00a0 So how does this affect you?\u00a0 Are you discussing this during your board meetings? Should you be?<\/p>\n

The national deficit <\/strong>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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

I’m looking at the D of demographics <\/strong>for a moment in terms of demographics and diversity of our boards and committees.\u00a0 Ensuring the board is representative of the demographic mix of the people we work with can be important.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I’m particularly thinking here about a younger demographic – perhaps of people aged 18-24.\u00a0 The inclusion of younger people onto boards and committees is very poor, both nationally and locally.\u00a0 How are you and your board working with younger people?\u00a0 Are they included?<\/p>\n

(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).<\/p>\n

Finally, Digital <\/strong>– a subject to which I refer regularly.\u00a0 Websites, cloud tools, social media, mobile technology, apps and more.\u00a0 Digital is everywhere and it is both a challenge and an opportunity for each and every charity and community organisation.\u00a0 So again, what are the digital and technological issues for you and your board?\u00a0 Do you have the right skills to call upon? Who is leading on technology from within your board?\u00a0 Do you know how to benefit from technology to improve the way you work or are you barely keeping your head above water?<\/p>\n

So thank you Julia for a reminder of some large issues that we should all be aware of in our boards and committees.\u00a0 Take some time to consider them appropriately.<\/p>\n

Article by Karl Elliott.\u00a0 Originally published in the VANEL “View from the Top” monthly e-newsletter, issue 02.
\nEach month “The View from the Top” e-newsletter is sent for free to charity trustees, directors and committee board members who have subscribed.\u00a0 To subscribe your organisation needs to be a Member or Friend of VANEL.\u00a0 Find out more on the www.viewfromthetop.org.uk<\/a> website.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ar article originally published in issue 02 of the monthly VANEL e-newsletter about governance, trusteeship and leadership – “The View from the Top”. Article explores 4 important “D’s” that charity leaders, boards and committees should keep en eye on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"xn-wppe-expiration":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-action":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-prefix":[],"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3cThd-2Z9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11479"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11480,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11479\/revisions\/11480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}