Thought for the day (and a postscript to yesterday’s posting on good governance)

This morning I stumbled on fairly profound quote that has relevance to the question of what is effective governance and leadership:

Managers are concerned with doing thing rights.
Leaders are concerned with doing the right things.
Anonymous

Good governance – more than just getting the process right

I’ve been reading the National Housing Federation’s Code of Governance. (I do know how to enjoy myself. Moreover, I am attending a consultation event on changes to the Code so I thought I should do some prep.)

The Code may be four years old but it is hard to fault what it says – its content sets out best practice in governance. (It is probably easier to fault the application of the Code by many housing associations. Several have half-heartedly implemented time limits on board membership in order to avoid applying the spirit of the board renewal requirements. I suspect many others fail on other provisions such as publicising the membership of sub-committees – probably without even knowing.)

I might fault the Code on what it does not say. I would suggest that what is missing from the Code is a full recognition of the importance of board dynamics and organisational leadership.

Moreover, the Code is weak in its overall tone. Good governance is about delivering excellent outcomes as well as getting the process right.

The Code notes:

Good governance is more than good practice – it is good business too … As such good governance enhances organisational reputation, and ensures better results are achieved.

That’s true in so far as the evidence demonstrates an association between governance and performance. But good governance is about focusing on results, outcomes and impact – you can’t just assume that procedural ticks will yield deliver the goods.

Poor governance again: under-achieving governors to blame for poorly performing colleges

The new Ofsted review of colleges' improvement has noted: "Ineffective governance and management lay at the root of many weaknesses seen in underperforming colleges."

It is sad that some governors do not get it. Ofsted found governors who were so absorbed by the financial position of their college that they didn’t pay enough attention to the success of students. As a Chartered Accountant (and someone who has seen the mess left by colleges lacking financial viability), I see the importance of finance - but it is only a means to an end.

The report also found that some governors and managers also avoided making difficult decisions.

The report also noted: "There was no culture, understanding or acceptance of accountability - these managers were not constructively self-critical and frequently looked for something or someone to blame when things went wrong or improvements were not forthcoming.

Some quotations on forecasting the future

As a postscript to my thoughts on the ability of university finance directors to foretell inflation, I thought it might be worth including some quotes on forecasting.

I always avoid prophesying beforehand because it is much better to prophesy after the event has already taken place.
Winston Churchill

Never make forecasts, especially about the future.
Sam Goldwyn

A pessimist is an optimist with more information.
Anonymous

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
Oscar Wilde

Inflation, risks and the “financial acumen” of university FDs

It’s an ill-wind of high retail price inflation that brings university staff pay rises of more than twice the government's public sector pay norm. The three-year pay deal for universities provided for a rise this year of 2.5% or the September retail prices index - whichever is higher.

Some universities will struggle to pay 5% and may defer its introduction. In response, the University and College Union has argued that the employers have had two years to budget for the settlement. The UCU general secretary has said that she would be “concerned about the financial acumen” of any institution that had failed to budget for the 5%.

As I often work as an interim finance director, I will resist the temptation to leap to the defence of higher education FDs although did anyone foresee that inflation was going to double? (Who wants to bet on inflation in two years time? The Bank of England’s central estimate for consumer price inflation is less than 2% although its range of forecasts ranges from under 1% to well over 3%.)

While no one (or almost no one) really expects FD and university governing bodies to foretell the future and provide for each and every contingency, this situation shows the importance of treating seriously sensitivity analysis – thinking through the “what ifs” of financial planning. Too often risk management is seen as a load of old risk registers – whereas good risk management requires a lot more of management and governance.

Effective boards: 12 principles

The excellent Healthcare Governance Review blog notes that the recent publication by the Department of Health of a review of healthcare regulators includes an endorsement of the Carver policy governance model for boards.

As an appendix to the DH report, the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence working group sets out the 12 principles for an effective board:

1. The board should determine the purpose and values of the organisation, and review these regularly
2. The board should be forward and outward looking, focussing on the future, assessing the environment, engaging with the outside world, and setting strategy
3. The board should determine the desired outcomes and outputs of the organisation in support of its purpose and values
4. For each of its desired outcomes and outputs, the board should decide the level of detail to which it wishes to set the organisation’s policy
5. Any greater level of detail of policy formulation should then be a matter for the determination of the chief executive and staff
6. The means by which the outcomes and outputs of the organisation are achieved should be a matter for the chief executive and staff; the board should not distract itself with the operational matters
7. The chief executive should be accountable to the board for the achievement of the organisation’s outcomes and outputs
8. In assessing the extent to which the outcomes and outputs have been achieved, the board must have pre-determined criteria which are known to the chief executive and staff
9. The board should engage with its ownership regularly and be confident that it understands its ownership’s views and priorities
10. The membership of the board should be capable and skilled to represent the interests of the ownership; this should not be done in a tokenistic way
11. Information received and considered by the board should support one of two goals - to enable decision making, or to fulfil control and monitoring processes
12. The board must govern itself well, with clear role descriptions for itself, its chair, and its members, with agreed methods of working and self-discipline to ensure that time is used efficiently

Perhaps the report might be read by the boards at Newcastle United and West Ham where there have been some issues around the involvement of boards in operational decision-making.

Glittering prizes? £20k to unleash the power of public information

On this blog I've occasionally moaned about Directgov. (I've moaned even more about the lack of imagination in parts of the third sector.) I was therefore pleased to read that the government is saying: Tell us what you'd build with public information and we could help fund your idea!

The Power of Information Task Force is offering a £20,000 prize. The government is even offering gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information. (You normally only get that much information on a pen drive or a couriered cd). The website reassures us: "Rest assured, this competition does not include personal information about people."

This approach is to be welcomed.

Better management reporting: How to make an Impact

I was disappointed yesterday. I saw that the Institute of Chartered Accountants is hosting a lecture by Jon Moon in Birmingham in November but then realised that I had a prior commitment.

Who is Jon Moon? He has written an excellent book on How to make an Impact – basically writing reports that are uncluttered so the message is clear. The report has certainly changed the way that I present information when I am working as an interim Finance Director.

I believe that so much management reporting in the public and third sectors is weak that I am sure that others could learn something.

People can attend the lecture even if they are not members of the ICAEW Finance and Management Faculty. I would also recommend the templates that Jon Moon gives away on his website.

A brief break in postings

Shared ownership - A problem shared?

This month’s Roof special on Affordability makes rather depressing reading – with perhaps the exception of the new Homes and Communities Agency chair promising things will only get better (after they get initially worse).

I’ve always been a bit of a sceptic with shared ownership. It is of course a cheap form of affordable housing for the public purse and a cheap form of asset ownership for families. But there have been problems with viewing it as a panacea – as well as issues such as with key worker schemes and Social HomeBuy.

Now Roof depressingly reports that shared ownership accounts for between a fifth and a quarter of the workload of some debt advisers. If they haven’t done so already, housing associations need to critically review the way that they assess the ability of applicants to sustain shared ownership. There is some bad practice out there – and it could lead to more people losing their homes.

The Housing Corporation's traffic lights set to be turned off – but what about other tick box exercises?

Everyone loves traffic lights when it comes to regulation, governance and management. So many reports are brightened up by red, amber and green. So it was with mixed feelings that I read that the new social housing regulator is likely to turn the lights off.

According to Public Finance magazine, Peter Marsh, the chief executive designate of the new regulator, believes that the traffic lights seen in Housing Corporation Assessments encourage a 'tick-box' culture without fully revealing to tenants how well their landlord is performing. There is also a belief that most associations gain green lights but do not have any further incentive to improve.

Perhaps there is too much complacency with the reality of continuous improvement not matching the rhetoric. Yet turning the lights off might not transform things.

Hopefully the new regulatory regime will see radical changes in the annual ritual involving housing association boards agreeing and submitting a self-assessment compliance statement against the Housing Corporation’s Regulatory Code. This exercise involves presenting evidence to justify a tick against a range of criteria. It is the epitome of box ticking even though the Housing Corporation allows a degree of flexibility and stresses that it should report on improvement. I fear that it does not.

Perhaps we might have a more robust assessment of organisational health and performance. There should be an expectation that strengths and weaknesses should be highlighted and honesty encouraged with the exercise driving improvement. Such an assessment should be directed more towards the customers rather than the regulators.

Tough times and the third sector

The impact of the current economic downturn on the third sector has been in the news. This week Oxfam announced plans for job loses and cost savings. While charities face falling income and rising costs – the people who need them most, need them even more. Earlier in the summer an NCVO study found that the third sector was expecting “tough times”.

The think tank nfpSynergy has published an interesting mini-report on what happens to charities in a recession. They believe that this is a 10-month delay between an economic downturn and its subsequent effect on charities income although the falling disposable income is almost immediate.

I think the nfpSynergy research is useful but we need to be wary. Looking at the last two and a half decades tells us only so much as we have not had a recession for over a decade – and we might still escape one now. The combination of inflationary pressures and credit crunch is both toxic and unusual.

nfpSynergy link the economic downturn to risk management. I wonder how many charities and other third sector organisations included an economic downtown in their risk reviews and prepared contingency plans?

Going green in HE, FE and elsewhere in the public and third sectors: revolving funds and useful advice

It was good to read last week that the Higher Education Funding Council is launching with Salix Finance a £30m Revolving Green Fund to support the introduction of carbon-saving projects. Earlier in the year the Learning and Skills Council launched similar funding (and I believe that there will be more finance in the future.)

Even when funding bodies are not providing financial support, the public and third sectors can do something. I have come across a useful source of information on Canny Buying. This site is aimed at organisations in Scotland but sustainability has relevance south of the border too.

No exit (interview) from governance: saying thanks and learning from ex-board members

The recent review of the third sector’s Code of Good Governance recommended that the Code be updated with a second edition. One thing that the update might consider would be encouraging exit interviews when board members, trustees, governors or whatever leave a boards.

I must confess that this is not my brilliant idea. It was suggested in one of the podcasts on the On Being Board website from BoardStar. (I suspect that this practice may be commoner in the USA than the UK as I have seen reference to it on another American website.)

The case for exit interviews for departing board members is perhaps obvious. They allow the organisation to say thanks for the contribution of the individual. They give the organisation the opportunity to learn as the individual is able to highlight issues and weaknesses with greater candour than perhaps previously.

No doubt many organisations who think exit interviews are useful for staff leavers forget to have them for board members who have the task of giving the organisation its strategic direction and monitoring its performance.

Disappearing universities: financial viability and demographic factors

Last weekend the Financial Times reported that the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s had warned of “certain universities ceasing to exist”.

The S&P identified the issue of changing demographics. They noted official forecasts that by 2020 there will be 16 per cent fewer 18-year-olds in the UK. (The implications of which will be felt by FE and sixth form colleges even sooner unless the government is successful in raising participation rates at 16-18.)

S&P distinguishes between “the newer, less research-oriented universities” and “leading universities”, which will continue enjoy strong demand from UK pupils.

The report expects the disappearing universities to go by merger rather than going bust. However, it is a little depressing if institutions cease to be financially viable largely through external factors no fault of their own. (Of course, badly managed institutions will go that bit sooner and with more mess!)

Governance: what is it?

On the Health Service Journal website there is an article on the role of NHS boards and their duty to the public. Paul Stanton argues:

There is significant confusion and muddle in the DH and the NHS about the nature of governance. It is not uncommon to hear senior figures talking about boards managing or leading their organisations. This implies a fundamental lack of clarity about the explicit separation that should exist between the task of a board, which is primarily legislative (making policy, setting strategic goals and holding the executive, and through them the organisation, to account) and the task of the executive (albeit some executives are also corporate directors within the legislative board), which is to lead and manage the organisation so that policies are implemented, strategic goals are achieved and the local community is served.

He credits the American non-profit governance guru John Carver whose model distinguishes governance and management. The board's role is primarily to set policies - essentially, the ends.

While Carver was influential in thinking about the governance of FE colleges soon after they were incorporated as autonomous bodies, his thinking does not get enough attention in the public and third sectors where many bodies drift and range far and wide rather than focusing on their core tasks.

An alternative take on governance was the recent comment that "[Good] governance is a little bit like porn" from Robert Daines, the co-director of Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance. (This was apparently referring to a Supreme Court judge's comment about recognizing obscenity. "I can spot it when I see it, but it is hard to say what it is.") Who ever said governance was boring.

Governor workload and remuneration in FE Colleges: an Irish problem

While I am generally sceptical about board remuneration – particularly for smaller organisations – I can see a case for chairs of boards in the public and third sectors being paid. There was an article in the Irish press this weekend reporting that four of the six chairs of Northern Ireland's newly merged further education colleges have now resigned due to an escalating workload in the absence of payment for their services.

When the positions were created, the commitment was estimated at eight to 10 meetings per year, but the appointees said they attended up to 70 meetings a year.

More on pay, incentives and motivation: donating unpaid overtime in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors

There is an interesting article in the Spring issue of Research in Public Policy from Bristol University’s Centre for Market and Public Organisation.

The article summarises some CMPO research In search of the public service ethos. While people talk of a public service ethos, do they actually demonstrate it in behaviour through donating labour in the form of unpaid overtime. It crunched raw data that showed 46% of employees in education, health and social care in the non-profit sector do some unpaid overtime compared with 29% of their counterparts in the for-profit sector.

After adjusting for demographic variables and for the possibility that unpaid overtime may be motivated by the prospect of promotion or bonuses, it concluded that people working in welfare services in the non-profit sector are 12% more likely to do unpaid overtime than those in the for-profit sector.

The authors point out that:

[The] estimate of the premium suggests that an additional 120 million hours are donated in the public sector compared with similar people working in similar jobs in the private sector. This is equivalent to an extra 60,000 people.

But before we get to the unlikely scenario of advocates of keeping the NHS (and other public services) public using the argument that the private sector is bad because it fails to extract unpaid labour from its employees, its worth noting that the researchers did not find that people changed behaviour when they moved between the for-profit and non-profit sectors.

Where does that leave us? Perhaps the research strengthens the case for a mixed economy in public services. The existence of non-profits and for-profits may allow better matching of people to the sector and the motivational structure that works for them. Of course, non-profits cover a range of models and the research did not explore the interesting question of how public sector or third sector employees may work differently.

Thoughts on pay: declining pay rises

Pay is in the news a lot. If its not local government workers striking over pay rises below inflation, its Carol Vorderman saying that a 90% pay cut doesn’t add up for her.

On her FT.com podcast, the management columnist Lucy Kellaway condemned Mervin King for not taking part of his remuneration package as Governor of the Bank of England. She suggested that if a chief executive declines a pay rise, he (or she) should be dismissed for presiding over a dysfunctional pay system. She advocated sacking remuneration committees as a solution to excessive pay.

Before public and third sector organisations sack anyone, they should check that their remuneration committees demonstrate best practice in terms of rigorous scrutiny of pay and performance.

Ujima governance and regulation: lessons for everyone

After something of a wait, the Housing Corporation website today carries the report of the independent Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the collapse of Ujima Housing Association (pdf available). My first impressions are favourable. It appears to advocate better regulation rather than more recognition.

The report notes:

Ujima’s fate has starkly highlighted issues of governance and regulation that should be salutary for the Board of every registered social landlord, and for the Corporation and its successor bodies, and also contains important issues for the sector’s lenders and for government to consider.

It goes on:

It is not the objective of the Inquiry to seek to attribute blame. But, in our opinion, Ujima’s collapse was the result of bad management and an ineffective Board.

As so often in reports studying the entrails of failed and collapsed organisations (both in the social housing sector and elsewhere such as the NHS and charities), governance problems were found to include board members providing insufficient challenge to management and failing to insist on the provision of proper information sufficient to fulfil their responsibilities. For example, the report notes the limited and “poor quality” financial reports and the lack of risk management information.

These are things that board members at housing associations as well as other organisations need to consider carefully while the Housing Corporation (and its successors) implement the recommendations relating to better communication and earlier, more effective regulatory action.