Words are tokens for concepts.
Some words and concepts are matched one for one. Some words are universally understood with no variations in the concept or concepts they represent or combine
“Governance” doesn’t have those properties
Governance as a token matches a whole different set of concepts depending on who’s using it; Which forms of region they follow both traditional EG Christian/Muslim or recent EG PMI or agile and many other factors including emotions.
A definition that I have formulated and offer to others is
Governance is the process by which one or more people apply best endeavours to safeguard the interests of one or more other’s so that they prosper.
Interests are like beauty - In the eye of the beholder.
We have multiple problems with aligning interests of all parties.
It will necessarily be the fact that interests are not universal (but they can be embraced by proxy on behalf of others). Interests are dynamic, Balances between interests have ebb and flow, The formulas by which they are traded off have multiple terms that change; Some easily and some stiffly, some disproportionately to the stimulus, others linearly within limits and others only by hysteresis.
Interests do not have to follow any rational pattern! 🫢
Sometimes one person’s best interest is against the interests of (an)other/s - This will generate dissonances that are different between agency and stewardship, between religious teachings and value systems
The ‘aligned interests challenge’ can be most significantly marked when governance is of an agency type and least marked when it is of a stewardship type.
Agent or Steward?
To characterise agency and stewardship briefly but unsatisfactorily we might say agency is where one is paid (commission?) to fake it and stewardship one has loyalty.
The parental care for an inheritance might be an example of stewardship and the company director may be agency.
Governance is a process.
That means within every instance of its operation there is a need for the process to be defined practically (operationally) within a procedure.
Amongst other things a procedure needs Roles with obligations and privileges (duties and rights) and capacity and competency and capability. Within and between a collection of roll holders we have culture. Maybe also accountabilities and responsibilities.
Process and procedure have steps whose start and end conditions need to be recognised. So there is a need for conditions and verifications and validations and exception handling processes with contextually relevant procedures/ roles…. They too are procedures. They have steps and may, additionally need their own Escalation processes - It’s probable the self-referential fractal structure has no more classes of procedure (? I’m not sure)
With validations and confirmations the need for metrics and test specifications emerges. So too do the ideas of goals or targets or objectives which may or may not be equivalent (or even equal) concepts but are definitely three different tokens.
All of the above operates where certainty of anything is an illusion.
The introduction of uncertainty - with both multiple probabilities and impacts as well as a mix of positive and negative for every stakeholder and culture defined group further disturbs all attempts to conduct governance.
Emergence
The factors have the property of being complex. That is inputs (may) have a non-linear effects - For example either none or massive in the context of each stakeholder individually and/or collectively
I haven’t yet covered all of the immediately relevant factors resulting from the operation of governance.
For example the simple question of what does safeguarding someone’s interests contain?
Are benchmarks taken over the long term or the short-term?
The Balanced Scorecard
Kaplan and Norton explored via the Balance Scorecard (BS1) many of the factors and how they are interrelated.
The ideas in BS2 and BS3 have extended the scope and subtlety of the complexities of the question of safeguarding interests.
PAS808
The concepts of “Super Wicked Problems” do similar by pointing out system boundaries have to be drawn in the right place in order that the stakeholder community is correctly defined.
We might be lucky in that the boundaries currently, rarely extend off planet nor are artificial intelligences yet stakeholders although they are already actors.
I claim to have fully matched the token governance to a usable description: The process of someone caring for somebody else’s interests. . I’ve said before that I call it caring for capital or Governance of P⁴ or O¹
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All of the above sets upon a framework of understanding that includes Decision Points along with The Product (Goods and or Services) life cycle and Market life cycles and Portfolio balance, and Program entry exit and conduct throughout, and Projects and Work-Streams/-packages ditto and across a hierarchy of authorities that both run up (technical) and down (often arbitrary personal and sometimes inappropriate in all respects except ownership confers the right to use assets as one chooses within the wider moral context of no harm to others)
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