Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa

01/03/2018

As well as doing my PhD I am also providing consultancy services in governance and public policy.

I have just returned from Melbourne, where the Australian Institute of Governance has certified my practice. My big takeaway from my certification is the critical importance of crafting timely, accurate and easy to understand advice.

I am reminded of some work I recently completed for a large Crown entity.

Borrowing from the work of Jennifer George and Gail Fairhurst, I developed six core frames for the senior executives to use with their Board. Each frame addressed a specific board context.

The six core frames were:

• Promoting a collective sense and ownership of strategies, goals and KPIs.
• Calling attention to role responsibilities that ground the strategies and goals and further them.
• Instilling knowledge of the entity’s authorising and working environment and its work.
• Generating trust and confidence as well as cooperation.
• Encouraging flexibility in board decision-making and confidence and optimism in delegating a decision-making right.
• Constructing and maintaining an appropriate and meaningful identity as a Crown entity and answering, “Who are we?” and “What really counts?”

In my experience, the core frames for each organisation are different.

The frames depend on how the decision-makers like to receive information, the public policy issue, and what matters to decision-makers in the performance cycle.

Designing and using core frames takes skill and practice.

I am about to start a two-week assignment designing the core frames for a medium-sized tech company. I wonder what their core frames will be? Whatever they are, it will be a set of frames that keep the decision-makers together and doesn’t drive them apart.