Public governors of the world unite!
Are you a school governor? Housing trust member? Health board member?Community councillor? Charity trustee? Lay member of a university board? Local councillor? Community councillor? Welsh Assembly Member? Member of the Scottish Parliament. Member of the UK Parliament? Or something similar in the UK? Or anywhere else in the world?
Well then, my friend, you are a public governor.
You may have been elected or you may have been appointed. Most likely you do this for expenses although you might have a salary to allow you to contribute full time. Unlike the people you employ, you are responsible for more than your own conduct — you are responsible for the body that you serve.
I’m full of admiration for what you do and think you deserve more credit than you get. I suspect you find your role rewarding in any case. At least I hope you do.
An interesting point for me, and why I’m writing this, is how much you all have in common — even if you don’t seem to interact much outside of your chosen sectors. This is something I’ve noticed through my work in local government scrutiny and through my research.
Even the phrase ‘public governor’ seems strange to use — it’s telling that there doesn’t seem to be a single, obvious term to describe these roles despite how much they have in common (let me know if I’ve missed it).
So, here are some of the things that public governors have in common:
Shared values
Public governors are public servants. They give up their time and share their expertise because they want what’s best for their communities and they want to make a difference. While corporate governance is concerned with increasing profit and value for shareholders, public governance is concerned with improving the quality of public services, ensuring value for money and making things better for citizens.
Shared practice
Being a public governor is not about title or status, it’s about what gets done. The work involves meetings and reports of course, but also overseeing budgets, monitoring performance, questioning decision makers and sometimes appointing senior managers.These things will be familiar to public governors whichever sector they work in.
Shared challenges
While legal frameworks may be different there are some challenges common to all public governors including, for example, accountability, transparency and participation. That’s not to mention the things that worry individuals such as ‘do I have the skills I need?’, ‘am I doing this right?’, ‘how can we make sure things don’t go wrong?’ and ‘how can we improve what we do?’
Shared relationships
Being a public governor is about managing a series of relationships. They look upwards to the regulators and lawmakers who frame their work, inwards to the managers who run services and deliver policies on their behalf and outwards to the partner organisations that they collaborate with. Most important of all is their relationship with the public that they work with and for. Oh, and don’t forget the relationship with the people paid to give them professional support.
So What?
Well, given how difficult public governance is for those that practice it, any source of support and inspiration has to be worth thinking about. Perhaps a conversation or two with public governors in an unfamiliar corner of public service might just be the thing to help you move forward. Perhaps hearing that others worry about the same things that you do might just give you the reassurance that you need. Or perhaps knowing that there are 100s of thousands of public governors across the UK might make you realise that you are part of something much, much bigger than your own public body.
Public governors of the world unite — you have a world to win!
