Principled Innovation LLC

What ungovernance is not

August 22nd, 2007

In a comment on Jamie’s blog, Virgil Carter offers the following observations about governance and “ungovernance”:

Governance is just another term for leadership–leadership by the governance team to set direction, monitor progress and communicate with key constituencies. Governance teams are empowered for organizational decision-making and usually carry fiduciary accountability. This is why an intriguing phrase like “ungovernance” may be a conundrum, since no non-profit (or other similar institution) can exist without governance and those who are accountable to exercise it successfully and enjoyably.

Virgil is one of my favorite people in the association community. He is brilliant, a true renaissance man and a class act, and so I am always loathe to disagree with him. In this instance, however, I must do so respectfully. My use of the term “ungovernance,” does not imply the absence of a governing system, but the (r)evolution of the system away from purely structural, mechanical and control-oriented considerations, and toward a living ecology of stewardship that is holistic, fluid and collaborative. One of the core beliefs of ungovernance is the recognition that associations don’t exist to be governed. Associations exist to create some form of value for a set of stakeholders and, as a consequence, their activities require some form of strategic stewardship. Legacy approaches to association governance tend to focus the attention of a small number of elite contributors, e.g., boards, CEOs, senior staff, on the work of optimizing technical governance processes and practices that do not create distinctive value for members and customers in their own right, and often obstruct value creation elsewhere in the organization. Not only does this way of doing business create both direct and opportunity costs for associations, but it is fundamentally incompatible with the accelerating and intensifying paradigm shift taking place in the business environment and in our society overall.

Virgil also suggests that “governance is just another term for leadership.” If we accept this premise as true, then it is much easier to see why governance has failed so many associations and held others back from realizing their full potential. We ground our traditional conceptions of association leadership firmly in the notion of the charismatic executive authority figure, no matter whether that individual is staff or volunteer. The underlying principles and specific agenda of the top leader(s) tend to drive organizational activities year after year (often notwithstanding an existing strategic plan), a condition that leaves associations swinging from one set of parochial priorities to the next with every change in regime. While many organizations pay homage to the importance of “the team” in achieving desired results, the approach actually in use is to focus “accountability” (read that as blame) on those individuals who fail to meet expectations because they didn’t “get with the [the leader’s] program.”

In contrast, ungovernance proposes to make a direct and unbreakable link between the need for business model innovation in associations, and our approach to stewardship. If associations are going to complete the transition into the 21st Century, they must develop new, sustainable business models that create fresh opportunities for success relative to the changing dynamics and needs of the networks, communities and markets they serve. Inevitably, these business models will need to be open, inclusive and collaborative to a much greater degree than associations have traditionally been comfortable, because most of the ideas, knowledge and talent required to make them work lives outside of the boundaries of our walled gardens. In this context, closed, top-down governance structures will have no chance to persuade an authentically diverse set of contributors to accept more responsibility for creating organizational success. We must change our habits of mind, and embrace leadership and stewardship as genuinely collective concepts that challenge us to integrate our own passionate intentions with the passionate intentions of others to create a more powerful whole. I’m not suggesting it will be easy to go in this direction, but it is the right direction for organizations in our community to pursue.

There is one aspect of Virgil’s comment with which I agree. Our organizations do need some form of governing system in order to maintain coherence and momentum in the face of profound disruption and discontinuity. As I’ve suggested above, however, ungovernance speaks to creating a more organic system of stewardship imbued with the fundamental commitment to leave our organizations better than how we found them. It is our success in delivering on this commitment that will shape the future of the association community.

Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity, We Have Always Done It That Way, Garage Memes, Governing for Innovation