leadership and governance

During my month of reading in Maine, I stumbled upon several of the important texts in the discipline of political philosophy - those texts that discuss why and how people govern themselves within a community - and why some forms of governance work and others do not.  It was a fascinating time for me to be reading these texts as I assume a new role at Concordia where I can lead the dialogue on this topic.  Reading Aristotle's Politics, Machiavelli's The Prince, and Rousseau's Social Contract (with many more still to be read) got me thinking of the importance of governance and how a leader functions within that role.  Whether you run a family, a church, a business, a nonprofit, or even a university, there needs to be a set of "rules" by which one governs and by which those involved in the family/community/organization know how to function.  When people know how they are expected to live together - and those expectations are actually lived out - life can be fairly peaceful for most of the people most of the time (even when you disagree with the expectations, at least you know what they are).  And the more I read, the more I realized that it is that person in the leadership role that is accountable to ensuring that those expectations are reasonable, understood, known, and carried out in a manner that is fair and just...thus the importance of governance.

So many times we as leaders think about getting better at leadership - those behaviors and skills that enhance our ability to make decisions, think strategically, build relationships, act collaboratively, etc.  What we may forget is that while we need to do all of those things, we also need to function within an organization that includes people and their needs to feel ownership within that organization.  How will your organization make decisions?  How will others be involved in that decision making?  What type of structure is in place for people to have their voices heard? Who owns what decisions - and who holds others accountable to the decisions that are made?  The founders of the United States worked hard to determine a form of governance that would work for a new collection of states, with a wide variety of peoples, who had a large frontier in front of them.  They argued, fought, wrote, debated, and finally decided on a structure that they believed would work for them at that time and well into the future.  Little did we know how amazing that structure would be, now over 200 years old.  If only the governance structures of our organizations and institutions could last that long...

At the end of the day, we as leaders want those who work with us to be happy - no matter what the institution is or does.  The role of political philosophy is to think about what type of governance structure will make the most people happy most of the time.  I do not believe there is one perfect structure that will work all of the time for all of the people...but I do believe that there are ideals that have been around since the beginning of time that need to be present in any form of governance that is going to work.  I believe that people need to have a voice in the decisions that are made for an organization...and I believe that once those decisions are made, those same people expect that the decisions will be upheld and put into practice - and that when others violate those decisions that they will be held accountable.  Sounds easy, doesn't it?  If it was only so...

Leaders - consider the governance structure in your organization and ask if it is supporting the mission, vision and values that are in place.  If so, celebrate that and let people know how cool it is that the governance is working to help accomplish the tasks at hand.  If not, start thinking about how you will be able to align the mission, vision and values of the institution with its governance - and get to work making it happen.  WARNING - this is hard and messy work...it will take time and people will disagree...AND it will be worth all the time and effort put into the process.