The Governance Journey
© ICMCI & Sorin Cain, CMC
When we discuss governance, it seems it is the component of the social and economic life where innovation, the driver of the day, is least present. But it is not fully correct and I am just contemplating the developments around ICMCI in the last years.
It is obvious that we have been close to the situation of the “tailor which has no proper clothes”, to be a worldwide organization including lots of specialists in strategy, change or leadership, without a clear leading structure connected to the real life of the organization.
We know that ICMCI is not a business, it is run mainly by volunteers and there is no ownership relation between members, more, there are two tiers of members: the Members of ICMCI and the members of our Members, the consultants that we claim to represent. On the other hand we expect value, effectiveness and efficiency so we may request some performance from our people, being them either from the Board or the delegates, or the volunteers on the working committees, or other members of our IMCs.
It is obvious that the change in Governance of CMC-Global, our branding name, adopted less than a couple of years ago, started to produce effects, even if some details are still under fine tuning and the adjustment process will request eventually a revision at a three years term basis. But I would like to shortly share with you some lessons learned and also discussed during the face to face Board meeting in Vienna, last month.
First is accountability, it refers to the Board members the Delegates and even the IMCs. Getting closer to the IMCs, and making that a specific assignment for each board member with continued reporting as a permanent task for us.
Second is the transparency. ICMCI is more like a public entity and being open and fully transparent is a natural demand expressed by any of our members but also a need for a healthy development of our organization. The Board decision to publish the Minutes of Meetings (MoM) as well as clear set targets, reporting on achievements and strategy implementation is on line with this component.
The third but not the last is communication! Direct communication cannot be replaced by any other means and I am still a great believer in face to face and shaking hands. However the WebEx communications, started under the collaborative approach initiative and just recently re-started for 2017, were and still are an excellent opportunity to better understand, know, react and learn for all parties, and most probably a very efficient tool in running the CMC-Global community.
As always said, we cannot be a great organization without bringing together the energies of our members, the management consultants, individuals or firms, and the Governance has the prime role to facilitate the summoning in a proper and effective way!
Sorin Cain, CMC
Board Chair, ICMCI