A Closer Look at GRC – Governance

All the things I have been learning from the people whom I converse with and all the GRC literature I voraciously read and absorb seems to bring back the past experiences I have had with the organizations I have worked for. It’s surely not to castigate any of them nor to disparage, I think this is just my way of realizing and reaffirming the things that I am learning now. It’s amazing how these events are somehow connected to each other representing a reality that is out there.

I have worked with management teams that were shaken by external business requirements; pushed people to come up with corporate governance policy, the importance of which they don’t realize. They put up policies and procedures just for the sake of having them. I have met CEOs whose only concern was the dollars that the sales people brought in. I have met business leaders who never uttered a word about their vision and the ways of attaining such vision. They make people come up with business processes in writing, the life of which ends up nowhere but in paper. There was no passion and support to develop the culture they were trying to realize.

If I take a closer look, leadership plays a significant role in the way the organization navigates its course towards a direction or the lack of it. Failure in governance is a failure in leadership. In order to achieve your organizational goals, you need good leadership – the kind of leadership that walks the talk. I believe that in governance, you need vision from the top and cascaded down to the bottom; and management commitment for the realization of that vision. Perhaps, GRC is still a distant star for some companies. But then again, if we take a closer look, there is a beautiful promise in GRC, only if it is approached the right way.