Through the range of governance roles I have been involved in, there has inevitably been a range of “strategic planning” sessions / workshops / insert description here. These have ranged from a mere item of business on the agenda , to all days sessions in airport hotel conference rooms, wineries and a few things in between.
But by far my favourite and I think most effective is the approach taken by a forestry company I am on the board of, we take a decent amount of time over a couple of days, we travel around our forestry estate and we talk, we wander, we kick tree trunks (tyres) and have some fantastic discussion. In the agricultural sector the next ten or twenty years will see momentous change, how assets are configured and deployed may look remarkably different to the present day set up. There are some incredible advances happening scientifically which will have a flow on impact, it is an exciting and challenging time. Any board working in the rural sector needs to take a moment and think what the future might look like and ask are we well prepared to respond to disruptions that may arise.
Incidentally I am also preparing a talk I’m giving shortly on Governance Issues, and this example around strategic planning feeds well into a wider theme of the discussion around what exactly is governance. It can often be perceived in the rural sector as a lot of sitting around tables in suits, biting air and achieving little while there is more important work to be done on farm. However, that needn’t be the case.
Governance is increasingly viewed as a profession, or at a minimum a form of practice which requires certain skills and training. Think of Governance in the same way one would refer to (by example only) Accounting / Finance, Legal Practice, Engineering, Medicine and Education. All of these fields involve a whole variety of different roles, however the foundation and fundamentals from which these roles emerge remain the same. It is the same with Governance and to drop down a level governance in the rural sector. Provided the key principles of best practice governance are at the foundation of what you do, then you can mould and shape how your organisation operates at a governance level to fit the needs of that organisation, including whether you do some of your strategic planning in steel cap gumboots in the middle of a forest.
- Ben Nettleton