Governance at the ETCMA
A Question and Answer session with EC member Susan Evans who is heading up Governance Committee at the ETCMA
What is Governance?
Governance is a system that provides a framework for managing any organisation. It identifies who can make decisions, who has the authority to act on behalf of the organisation and who is accountable for how the ETCMA and its people behave and perform. So you see, it is an important measure of how we are performing and the better the Governance, the more effective we can become.
What does it actually entail?
As the EC member responsible for our governance at the ETCMA it is important that we have specific papers in order, e.g. The Articles of the Association, which are the legal framework that binds the association in law. Each country has its own law regarding articles and ours come under the Dutch legal system.
Then, there are the responsibilities for running the Association. Who does what, when etc.
We are also in the middle of putting a risk register in place. This helps us to prepare the organisation for seen and unseen circumstances and events and to help us look at where we need to focus our work to keep the organisation relevant and up to date.
This sounds like hard work. Is it?
I have found this work really interesting. It is like in treatment, if we do not get to the root cause of the patients imbalance, treatment will be all over the place, with the patient not improving as they might with a comprehensive treatment plan. This is just a plan of how to get the most from our resources. I see organising our Governance as underpinning everything we do.
What does it look like?
I am in the process of bringing all our documentation up to date to provide a clear Governance handbook for the EC so every member understands their own part of the whole process. The clearer the process, the easier it is to keep everything running smoothly, a bit like making sure liver qi is moving smoothly.
The risk register is looking at the risks to the Association and putting mitigations in place where we can. This enables us to be prepared when something happens out of the blue e.g
What about Governance guidelines for the members of the ETCMA?
Of course, our various organisations will have their own Governance structures. Some may need some additional help getting things relevant and up to date and later this year, I am hoping to look at some kind of guidelines to help all our organisations keep up to date with good governance structures.
At the Congress in February I talked about Governance within the 5 element structure. Here are some of the positives and negatives of the workings of an organisation relating to the 5 elements.
Each element has its own set of responsibilities.
