Programme Updates
As Rethinking Governance develops, this page highlights important updates, new material and points of progress across the programme
1. The Missing Profession at the Heart of Governance
Rethinking Governance is now bringing one of its central arguments into sharper focus.
Political parties and governments, international and state institutions, and public and private corporations all rely on governing bodies exercising authority over matters that can carry serious consequences.
When that authority is exercised poorly, the consequences can reach far beyond the entity concerned. They can affect public confidence, economic stability, the quality of life of societies, future generations and the wellbeing of our planet.
Yet governance itself is still not treated as a recognised profession.
That is an extraordinary gap.
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No clearly defined purpose or accepted scope for governance itself.
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No common professional standard.
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No recognised route for proving competence.
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No proper governance-audit function focused on whether governance itself is fit for purpose.
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No enforceable mechanism for removing or disqualifying those who fall below the required standard from continuing to exercise governing authority.
Insight 7 addresses that gap directly.
INSIGHT 7: GOVERNANCE HAS NO PROFESSION
This is one of the central issues behind Rethinking Governance.
Over the past decade, I have studied a hundred years of major disasters.
What becomes impossible to ignore is not just the scale of the damage, but the pattern of recurring governance failure beneath it.
Again and again, these disasters expose deeper governance faultlines and failure points that remain hidden in plain sight.
The usual response is to deal with the symptoms: more legislation, more committees, more controls, more reports, and ritual promises that lessons will be learned and failure will not be repeated.
But the deeper cause is rarely confronted.
That raises a serious question: has governance itself been left too undefined, too fragmented and too weakly disciplined for too long?
If there is no recognised professional baseline for governance, governing bodies have no serious benchmark against which to test themselves.
There is no clear way to know whether they have drifted off course, fallen below the standard required, or allowed weaknesses to become normalised.
That is why this issue now needs to be brought into the open.
THE COMPANION QUESTION
If governance has no recognised profession, the next question is unavoidable:
What actually is governance?
That will be the subject of the next Programme Update.
Insight 8 addresses the companion question because no professional standard for governance can be built on vague language, scattered practice or assumptions about what governance means.
For those wishing to see this Insight now, the full set of eight Governance Insights can be found on the Governance Insights page.
THE GOVERNANCE SPECIFICATION PATHWAY
The first eight Governance Insights were developed from the opening episode of the Governance Exposed series (Episode 1: Introduction).
This is one of four major series that form the Governance Specification Pathway of Rethinking Governance.
The opening Insights follow a deliberate sequence:
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Insight 1 begins with the growing sense that things are getting worse.
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Insight 2 asks whether the apparent chaos around us may actually be part of a deeper pattern.
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Insight 3 widens the issue beyond government alone, to institutions and corporations.
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Insight 4 challenges the absence of proper standards for those who govern.
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Insight 5 examines why the embedded short-term emphasis cannot deliver long-term strategy.
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Insight 6 asks why wisdom in action is so often missing from decisions that that carry major consequences.
The final two Insights then move the argument into its most important territory.
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Insight 7 asks why governance has no recognised profession.
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Insight 8 asks what governance actually is.
Together, they mark the point where Rethinking Governance begins moving from exposing repeated failure towards the larger question of what must now change.
WHERE THIS LEADS NEXT
Insight 7 and Insight 8 prepare the ground for the Special Briefing now being developed for a dedicated page called Change Pathway to a New Governance Paradigm, which will be added to the Rethinking Governance website.
That Special Briefing is expected to become available over the next month or two and will set out the deeper case for moving governance from a fragmented and underdeveloped space into a more clearly defined, disciplined and professionally recognised field.
It will examine what that pathway will need to confront.
This includes transitional arrangements for existing officeholders, independent assessment of governing competence, governance-audit methods, professional standards, safeguards against capture, and the gradual movement from voluntary application towards statutory obligation.
The briefing will also address a difficult reality: those who would need to approve stronger governance requirements are often the same people whose appointments and performance would become subject to them.
That is why the pathway cannot depend only on those already holding power choosing to adopt these professional requirements.
The shift does not have to wait for legislation. It can begin when appointment panels, investors, lenders, insurers, funders, regulators, stock exchanges, accreditors and executive-search specialists start asking for evidence of governing competence and independent governance assurance.
The briefing will clarify how far a governance standard should reach in ensuring the effective performance of duties by governing-body members.
The standard would not set political ideology, public policy, corporate strategy or the decisions that governing bodies should make. It would define the qualifications, experience, domain knowledge and decision-making competence required for different levels of governing authority, complexity and consequence — and provide the basis for holding people to account when they fall below the required standard.
The profession itself would also need to be governed. It would require independence, transparent standards, due process, appeal, external scrutiny and protection against capture.
The standard should apply wherever governing authority carries serious consequences — across political parties and governments, international and state institutions, and public and private corporations.
The Special Briefing will not ask people to endorse a finished governance model.
It will ask whether the current gap can remain defensible — and whether those with relevant evidence, research, education, advisory experience, sponsorship, pilot opportunities or institutional leverage can help move the work from specification to proof, from proof to adoption, and from adoption towards mandate.
STAY CONNECTED
If this argument resonates, please consider subscribing for occasional updates as the work develops.
The next Programme Update will address the companion question: what actually is governance?
The next major update will be the Special Briefing on the Change Pathway to a New Governance Paradigm. That briefing will be essential for understanding the deeper issues that need to be confronted if governance is to move from repeated failure towards recognition, proof, adoption and eventual mandate.
Rethinking Governance is not being developed as a short campaign. It is a growing body of work intended to challenge how governance is understood, practised, tested and ultimately transformed.
