My doctoral research, to discover how boards can influence company performance outcomes, is continuing a pace. Currently, I have one more board meeting to observe, after which the twelve month cycle of boardroom observations will be complete. This major milestone signals a change in emphasis, towards data analysis, the testing of ideas and the drawing of conclusions—oh, and writing the thesis document! Although it'll be tight, I hope to complete the thesis and submit it for examination by Christmas.

The purpose of this post is to request some feedback please, to help me make sense of some emerging ideas. I'm mulling over a new conceptualisation of governance, one that challenges the widely-held view that governance and management should be kept separate. As alluded to in the paper I presented at ICMLG recently, the concept has the board fully engaged in the development of strategy.

The question that I would like some feedback on is: What underlying powers, behaviours and concepts do you think are necessary for such a conceptualisation of governance to work well? Five are mentioned in the paper, but you may have some other suggestions based on your experience. If you would like to share your ideas (supported with examples if you can), please contact me!