Insight Diversity strategy and governance
An action plan is not a governance system
A list of actions can be complete the day it is delivered and already fragile the following month.
THE MOMENT OF DELIVERY
An action plan is perfect exactly once.
On the day it is presented, everything holds together. The priorities follow from the diagnostic, the actions follow from the priorities, owners are named, deadlines are realistic. Leadership approves, and the general feeling is one of work completed.
The following month, reality starts drifting from the document. One action falls behind for a legitimate reason. Another turns out to be more complex than estimated. An owner changes roles. A priority ends up competing with a project that did not exist at the time of the diagnostic.
None of those events is a failure. They are the normal situation of an organization at work.
WHAT THE PLAN DOES NOT CONTAIN
It says what to do. It does not say what to do when things change.
An action plan is a photograph taken at one moment. It describes what seemed most accurate with the information available that day. What it cannot contain is how the gaps will be handled: who notices the delay, how often, in front of whom, and who decides to re-prioritize, add resources or drop an action that has become pointless.
That difference explains why two organizations, starting from the same diagnostic with the same plan, get very different results eighteen months later. The quality of the plan was not at issue. The difference played out in what was done with the gaps.
THE MOST COMMON SYMPTOM
The plan becomes a reporting document rather than a decision tool.
It gets pulled out before the meeting, statuses are updated, a percentage of completion is presented. The review consists of explaining the delays rather than deciding what to do about them. Everyone leaves with the sense of having taken stock, and nothing has been settled.
The drift is easy to spot. If the follow-up meetings mainly produce explanations, the plan is being used to report. If they produce decisions — reassign, defer, drop, escalate — the plan is being used to govern.
WHAT TO PLAN FOR BEFORE DELIVERY
The plan should arrive with its own revision method.
Three elements are enough, and they are decided when the plan is adopted, never afterwards: the pace of reviews, the place where trade-offs will be made, and what triggers an unscheduled revision. Without that third point, a plan keeps being followed methodically even though the context that produced it has changed.
What, in the next three months, would force us to revise this plan rather than follow it?
An action plan is an output. Governance begins when you have to assign, arbitrate, follow up, revise and decide what has to change. That is also what separates an initiative that holds from one that was merely well launched.
This text goes deeper into one dimension of our expertise The full system, the steering loop and the possible forms of engagement are set out on the expertise page.
Diversity strategy and governanceCONTINUE
Other insights on governance.
- Insight An indicator is only worth something if it can trigger a decision A number tracked every month but never discussed is not yet an instrument of governance.
- Insight A policy without governance is a documented intention A policy can be perfectly drafted and remain almost invisible in daily decisions.
- Insight What has no owner often ends up belonging to no one “Everyone is responsible” can become an elegant way of not knowing precisely who has to act.
- Insight The diversity committee must not become the owner of diversity The day the whole subject belongs to the committee, part of the organization can start believing it no longer belongs to them.