“Governance slows the business down.”
Few remarks are repeated with greater confidence in executive meetings. It has become the convenient explanation whenever delivery slips, a project stalls or commercial ambitions collide with challenge. Governance is too often portrayed as the cautious voice in the room, forever demanding another committee, another review or another layer of approval before progress can be made.
Former BT chief executive Gavin Patterson offered a far more compelling perspective. His argument was not that governance slows organisations down. It was that poor governance slows organisations down. That distinction is neither semantic nor academic. It goes to the heart of why some organisations consistently execute strategy while others mistake activity for progress. More importantly, it exposes a misconception that continues to shape conversations in boardrooms across every sector.
Too many stakeholders still mock governance as though it exists solely to frustrate innovation. They speak as if governance and commercial success occupy opposite ends of the same spectrum, forcing leaders to choose between moving quickly or governing well. That is a false choice. What they are often experiencing is not governance at all, but the consequences of fragmented accountability, confused decision-making, inconsistent information and operating models that were never designed to support growth. Poor governance creates bureaucracy because it leaves uncertainty unresolved. Good governance removes uncertainty before execution begins.
As a Privacy Director and a member of the Institute of Directors, I have come to view governance less as a compliance function and more as an organisational capability. It determines whether an organisation can make informed decisions with confidence, allocate accountability without ambiguity and pursue opportunity without losing sight of risk. That is why governance belongs at the centre of strategy rather than at its edges. It is not there to prevent progress. It exists to ensure progress can be sustained.
The organisations that move fastest are rarely those with the fewest controls. They are usually those with the clearest decision rights. Leaders know who owns the decision because accountability has already been established. Data is trusted because it has been governed properly. Risks are surfaced early enough to influence outcomes rather than explain failures after the event. Escalation paths are understood before pressure arrives. Projects advance because teams are not wasting valuable time debating ownership or searching for information that should already exist. Good governance creates the conditions in which speed becomes repeatable rather than accidental.
This is where boards should pay particular attention. Governance is not measured by the number of policies approved, committees convened or reports produced. Those are merely artefacts. The real measure of governance is whether the organisation consistently makes better decisions than its competitors. Strong governance improves the quality of judgement because leaders are working from reliable information, clearly defined responsibilities and an agreed understanding of risk. That is precisely what enables organisations to innovate with confidence rather than hesitation.
By contrast, poor governance taxes an organisation in ways that rarely appear on a balance sheet. Meetings become longer because confidence in the underlying information is weak. Decisions are revisited because accountability remains unclear. Strategic initiatives lose momentum because ownership shifts between committees and functions. Risks are identified too late to influence outcomes, leaving executives to manage consequences rather than shape decisions. The organisation feels busy, yet very little moves with certainty. Ironically, this is precisely the dysfunction that critics wrongly attribute to governance itself. The real obstacle is not governance. It is the absence of governance that is coherent, proportionate and intentionally designed.
Boards should therefore challenge a familiar narrative. Instead of asking whether governance is slowing delivery, they should ask whether their governance model enables better decisions at the pace their strategy demands. That question changes the conversation entirely because it shifts attention away from process and towards organisational capability. Governance ceases to be measured by compliance alone. It becomes a strategic asset that builds trust with customers, confidence among investors, assurance for regulators and clarity for employees.
Patterson’s observation deserves to become a permanent fixture in boardrooms because it captures an enduring truth about leadership. Good governance has never been the enemy of innovation, growth or commercial ambition. It is one of their greatest enablers. Businesses that understand this do not build governance because regulators expect it. They build it because trust compounds, confidence scales and strategy is only as strong as the decisions that bring it to life. The organisations that will define the next decade will not be those that abandoned governance in pursuit of speed. They will be those that recognised that good governance was the very reason they could move faster, adapt more confidently and create lasting value when others were still debating who owned the decision.
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Michael Irene, CIPM, CIPP(E) certification, is a data and information governance practitioner based in London, United Kingdom. He is also a Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK, and can be reached via moshoke@yahoo.com; twitter: @moshoke
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