Governance

How to Embed Cultural Safety in Healthcare Governance

Cultural safety for Australia’s First Peoples (which includes the terms Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islanders, and Indigenous Australians) has emerged as a key principle to address for healthcare executives through organisational governance. However, there are no guidelines that Boards Directors can use to restructure their governance practices to become culturally safe. This article provides some cultural safety principles for Board Directors to consider when responding to the demands of legislators, accreditors, professional associations, and healthcare staff for healthcare governance to become culturally safe.

How Cost Effective is Your Board?

The job of the board is to direct. That involves making decisions about what to do, how to organise, and who to engage with to further the purpose of the organisation. Those decisions, if taken reasonably and well, will require management support. Increased demands for governance reporting and enhanced diversity will impact not-for-profit company boards in many ways. The three of the most feared are: a possible imposition of direct board costs as new independent professional directors demand recompense for the time, effort and risk involved in the role the increased cost of servicing a larger board, especially in the crucial first few months of each appointment when directors’ demands for information are often at their highest the ever growing costs of providing reports requested or expected by external stakeholders that are diligently reviewed by the board yet add little value to their decision-making.

Are you ‘Processful’ or ‘Purposeful’ – A Governance Dilemma

I recently went overseas to a country that I knew would challenge me in many ways… an experience I relished. I enjoyed what the country had to offer in attractions and experiences, and observed a growing economy striving to adopt as much western culture as possible. This seemed impressive on the surface, however, the more I got curious the more I noticed the ‘busyness’ of the people: they were busy trying to be efficient but, were failing to be effective.

Association Boards: Getting to "Yay!"

Board consensus is not about reaching lowest common denominator, grudging agreements, but about making decisions together that board members accept and can actively support, particularly when communicating them to stakeholders and association members. While all boards have their unique quirks and strengths, association boards can face particular challenges in reaching genuine consensus for action on major strategic issues. Here are three key challenges I’ve identified as experienced by many associations, and some practical, easy-to-implement ideas for overcoming them.

When should you schedule your board meetings?

When should you schedule your board meetings? In this short video Raph Goldsworthy (Managing Director, Better Boards) talks about how your chronotype and the chronotype of each board member should influence when you choose to schedule your board meetings. Key Points Due to our chronotype there are optimal times we are best at strategic thinking and decision-making. Looking at the chronotype’s of your board members can help you consider the optimal time of day to hold board meetings Transcript

Your Guide to More Effective Board Meetings

Most people know that meetings of any kind can be unproductive, and unfortunately board meetings are no exception. In many cases, board meetings are even more unproductive than everyday office meetings. Why? We can point to any number of reasons: personality clashes between board members, high-stress topics, and organisational or community politics can cause no end of problems. But most unproductive board meetings (and board problems in general) are actually caused by structural choices or assumptions.

Meeting Minutes, An Essential Guide for Directors

Important decisions are made all the time in the boardroom and accurate meeting minutes are crucial as a record of those decisions and discussions. Taking minutes, though, can seem like a time-consuming chore. But, as high profile legal cases have shown, minutes are increasingly being used as a way to determine whether directors are properly performing their duties and responsibilities. How to take good minutes Lawyer Brian Herd summarises minutes as “a true and accurate record of the meeting”, which must contain “clear and concise notes of main discussion points, be accurate and a clear register of decisions”.

Decoding the Ethical Framework

Revelations about the governance failings in some of our most iconic organisations is again challenging our paradigms about how organisations are, or can be, controlled and held accountable. Attention has turned to Ethical Frameworks to hammer morality back into corporate governance. So what is this new development, albeit one two and a half thousand years in the making? Time to decode the Ethical Framework. As the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry rolls on, more questions are being asked about how effective governance is achieved.

Customer-Centricity and Creating Better Social Outcomes

How important do you think customers are for your not-for-profit (NFP) organisation to achieve its objectives? Can you see the relationship between customer-centricity and your organisation’s goals to create better social outcomes? In this article, I invite you to explore the concept of customer-centricity in NFP organisations, understand its values, as well as present some case studies to demonstrate how this approach can help your organisation to create better social outcomes.

Could Your Board Be Asking Better Questions?

In accordance with Section 180 of the Corporations Act (2001), ‘A director or other officer of a corporation must exercise their powers and discharge their duties with the degree of care and diligence that a reasonable person would exercise’. Section 180 also includes the Business Judgment Rule, whereby to demonstrate that a director has exercised due care and diligence, a director should be able to demonstrate that they acted in good faith, made the judgment in good faith for a proper purpose, did not have a material personal interest in the judgment, informed themselves about the subject matter of the judgment to the extent they reasonably believed to be appropriate, and rationally believed the judgment to be in the best interests of the corporation.