Case Study 1: Governance That Works: Eliminating Meetings, Accelerating Decisions

Problem Statement

Senior stakeholders were losing confidence in programme oversight, with lack of clear progress, ownership, or what decisions needed to be made.

• Too many meetings and with unclear purpose, resulting in wasted executive time and monotonous sessions that ran longer than necessary

• Reporting was dense and verbose, leaving executives unclear about why they were in the meeting or what decisions needed to be made

• Messaging was inconsistent across presentations and decision forums

The Approach

1. Analyzed the current governance model and reporting structure to identify gaps in clarity and control, including dependencies between governing bodies and escalation pathways

2. Redesigned the governance framework, clarifying the hierarchy, reporting lines, and escalation paths between reporting and decision making meeting and committees

3. Developed governance charters for each governing body, outlining decision-making authority, roles and responsibilities of attendees, and the scope of what each forum would cover

4. Restructured the reporting framework and management information, ensuring decision makers received relevant, timely, and actionable data aligned to each forum's purpose

The Outcome

✅ Reduced meeting volume and meeting fatigue

With clearer governance structures and defined purposes, several redundant meetings were eliminated and others reduced in frequency. Overall, this resulted in approximately 15%-20% fewer meetings across the governance calendar, with the impact varying by role, some stakeholders saw significantly greater time savings depending on their attendance footprint.

✅ Faster & clear access to information

The restructured reporting framework replaced dense, paragraph-heavy narratives with focused management information and KPIs. Decision makers no longer had to wade through verbose text to understand status, the data was presented clearly and concisely, enabling faster comprehension and quicker decision-making.

✅ Increased clarity on actions and decisions required

Previously, meetings functioned as status updates with no clear call to action. People would leave and only afterwards realize decisions needed to be made or actions taken, requiring follow-up conversations. With structured governance and defined decision-making forums, specific actions and decisions were called out in real time, with clear ownership assigned before people left the room. This eliminated the post-meeting scramble and ensured accountability was immediate.

✅ Reduced overall programme risk

With the backlog of aged risks dramatically decreasing, overall risk was reduced. Previously, 25% of the risk register consisted of risks many months old with no clear path forward. Post-implementation, only a couple of risks remained in that aged category, demonstrating significantly faster resolution cycles.