The family as haven of governance
ALL of us as individuals need support as we go through having to fight and struggle to improve each day, such that gradually we become governance assets. We certainly can use guidance, direction, support and help. Those enterprises with a commitment to sustain and strengthen their governance programs should thus look for ways and means by which all these can be provided to the individuals who work in them. Counselling and guidance programs, support mechanisms, and help desks may be provided to assist and encourage individuals in their struggle to become the ultimate governance assets for the enterprise.
One key and vital support mechanism that can be provided for individuals in their personal governance journey can prove to be most effective and widely beneficial: and this is the outreach program pitched to the families of individuals. After all, it is within the family home where individuals can get all the support, encouragement, and assistance for them to become much better all-around individuals. It is there where they can practise all the personal governance values of integrity, fairness, courage, and orderliness. Indeed, the home is the haven where all these governance values can be observed and made to flourish.
As these personal governance values are brought home, individuals who work in enterprises thus become the catalyst for family governance: and this demands that everyone— starting with the individuals who work in specific enterprises—need to bring home something positive by which to build a home that is for all intents and purposes a school of virtues. Thus, it becomes necessary for individuals to try and give concreteness and specificity to the personal values of integrity, fairness, courage, and orderliness. Through their personal scorecard, they aim to incarnate, i.e. give flesh, these basic values that every individual must have; and by their example, which has to be practical and palpable, they end up sharing these same values with their spouse, and—with infinite patience— with their children as well.
Within the more intimate sphere of spouse-to-spouse relations, individuals who work in enterprises look for concrete ways and means by which— jointly with the spouse—they can build a family culture characterized by such institutional governance values as commitment, competence, professionalism, and that value which the Romans used to call as “pietas”, which essentially is love of the family, country, and God. To be sure, through a few concrete family practices, these “institutional values” can be made to take on a more concrete face every day. In any event, the spouses have it very clear that in building a family culture—distinctive of their own family—they are contributing to the imperative of institution-building of a community (i.e. the family), and by extension of the wider community.
The idea of a community, in the context of family governance, highlights the primordial importance of the proper upbringing of children. And this means that the family culture, for the sake of and for the benefit of the children, has to emphasize the due observance of the social governance values of respect for personal dignity, contributing to the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity. These are very big words, indeed. But in a family setting they are passed on, learned, and lived on a chopped-up-bit basis, i.e. through small concrete acts each day, given the family’s circumstances.
Personal governance cries out for its basic complement, which is family governance. Enterprises with a governance and transformation program to strengthen and sustain should therefore undertake a family outreach initiative as a way of effectively helping individuals become their ultimate governance assets.