Exemplar Governance

Moving Toward Human Flourishing and the Future Value of Your Mission

If you have been following our series on Exemplar Governance, welcome back. If this is your first time joining in, it’s great to have you along!

Over the past five months, we’ve been naming the key elements of Exemplar Governance and how best to incorporate them using the process approach. If you are currently an executive director, board member, trustee, or president (or are considering becoming one), this blog post is designed with you in mind. 

As we have learned through this series, designing an Exemplar Governance model for your organization relies upon individually and collectively embodying governance and ownership. It is so important that you individually are at a good place when you enter a board room, and it’s essential that those gathered collectively work well together. 

A process approach can be helpful here, because it slows the conversation down so that those gathered collectively and individually name

·        the purpose of our governing,

·        who plays what role in our governing,

·        what success looks like from our governing,

·        how best to monitor our mission.

By asking and answering these types of questions, all of us in the board room are aligned and have clarity on how we seek to embody our governance. Everything is in front of us. Nothing is behind or hidden from each other’s view. 

Our last blog in this series focuses our attention on why answering these types of questions is so very important.

As governors and owners of our mission, we are pointing the organization in a certain direction. 

When you think about pointing your organization in a certain direction, what comes to your mind? Take 60 seconds to pause and answer that question right now. (Seriously, pause here.)

One answer to that question might be “moving toward human flourishing.” 

Moving toward human flourishing can be defined and experienced within four different dimensions:

1. Individually: What are you experiencing as a human? In what ways Are you flourishing right now or are you suffering? Are board members flourishing in their role? Is what we are doing as an organization leading to or hindering individual human flourishing?
2. Institutionally: What evidence do we see of a flourishing organization? Are employees experiencing a satisfactory work environment and flourishing in their roles? Are we as an organization sustainable and creating a marketplace where customers want to interact with us?  Are we helping customers to flourish, or are we hindering them in any way?
3. Systemically: Are the systems that we engage with and utilize to carry out our mission creating an environment in which humans can flourish?  If we took a step back, might we discover that there are components of these systems that hinder those involved in them? What parts of our operating systems need to be changed in order for human flourishing to be advanced and improved? 
4. Societally: Does our mission lead to human flourishing in our local community, region, country, world? If so, how will we know? Who can we ask for an honest opinion? Is there a story present that can help us further understand what is hindering our ability to support humans to flourish?

These are tough questions that don’t have easy answers. There are many things that keep us from becoming excellent governors and owners of our organization’s mission, vision, and core values.

If you were to pause again for 60 seconds and have an honest conversation with yourself, what are two things that you already know are keeping you from Exemplar Governance? Name them out loud and write them down—it actually helps if you do that. 

Now, with those two things in mind, what is your next step?

This is the process approach to Exemplar Governance.  Your answers to these questions are part of the “secret sauce” for your organization. 

If you would like to learn more about how the process approach can support the Exemplar Governance of your organization, please click here to register for a FREE virtual workshop.

During our time together, Ron and I will walk you through the framework we outlined in this blog series. 

We look forward to seeing you!

	Lon L. Swartzentruber CEO and Managing Partner, Design Group International		Ron Mahurin Design Group International Senior Consultant