Going the full distance

THE process of cascading may get to, and involve, the last (even the smallest) operating unit within the enterprise. The power of small teams may be tapped and deployed to focus attention on harvesting the low-hanging fruits or delivering more game-changing breakthrough results. And the task of installing and nurturing a governance culture may be undertaken with a view of spreading it across the entire enterprise.

But unless the enterprise governance program gets down to the level of every individual person within the enterprise, it would not have gone the full distance; and it would not have taken the final insurance for securing its longterm sustainability.

How may an enterprise governance program go the full distance? Here are some of the usual ways:

• By extending the performance scorecard system to include personal scorecards. These may start as being exclusively work related. They may focus only on the targets of performance that the individual would need to meet, at every assessment or reckoning period, so as to be counted as having added value to the collective enterprise of getting the enterprise vision eventually realized.

• By assigning a certain respectable percentage of each person’s performance assessment for any semester or any given year to the contribution one has made to the pursuit of a given strategic priority included in the enterprise road map. This contribution may be reckoned from one’s personal participation and contribution to the task of a value aligned circle, or a project execution team, or a cluster team. In every case, every person’s performance cannot be assessed exclusively by standards viewed from purely operational duties; the view has to be broadened to include contribution to initiatives more directly connected with priorities in the enterprise road map.

• By providing an impetus---in view of the broader governance culture being installed and nurtured---to every person’s balanced personal development, taking into account all the other facets of a person’s life, particularly those facets that impinge more directly and immediately upon one’s performance of work-related duties. Striking a proper balance in one’s lifestyle would enable each person to become a more positive and productive (longer-lasting) asset for the enterprise moving forward; it would expand the possibilities by which all the elements of the governance culture being promoted by the enterprise get to be more deeply embedded into the heart and mind of everyone in the enterprise.

There may well be many other ways of getting every person within the enterprise to become a positive agent for good governance and enterprise transformation. Let the most effective ways be institutionalized in a given enterprise, and then shared with many more enterprises.

But there should be no doubt about the most basic feature of good governance: it starts with individuals; and it ends with individuals. At all points between the start and end, individuals continue to occupy the most significant place under the sun. No wonder, by going the full distance and getting governance to seep down to the level of the last individual in the enterprise, one takes out the final insurance for sustaining the enterprise governance program.