Chapter 10. Governance

At the enterprise level, governance is about aligning the resources and the capabilities of the organization with its highest-priority objectives and initiatives, to deliver maximum value outcomes for the stakeholders of the business. Governance in today's era is challenging, because the fast-changing environment means that the capabilities and initiatives of the enterprise are also changing. This implies that governance must contend with "moving goal posts." Hence, the challenge of achieving alignment between the resources and capabilities of the organization and its objectives and initiatives is much greater today than in the stable environments of the past.

A business that is modeled as a living system, that is, modeled for enhancing agility, needs to be governed very differently than a mechanistically modeled company, which is modeled to optimize efficiency, predictability, and certainty.

This chapter explores the following topics:

• The significance of governance for...