The Board Competency Framework and the Challenge for Governance Consultants

Boards do not have a natural evaluation or management authority. Answering to the shareholders and stakeholders will drive certain safeguards but getting clear, direct and real assistance in order to improve performance or competency must be sourced externally.

Introducing the Board Competency Framework offered by the Governance Park by Skillspeak service.

This service sits in what may be termed The Metrics Layer. When a Board prepares for its review by their Regulator, they must use all means at their disposal to comply but also be seen to be doing enough to continue to improve their performance and competency. In order to achieve this they may call on different layers of assistance. They must decide how to uses these assists and in which combinations.

The Board Competency Framework Explained

Performance and Competencies Standards

In the diagram, the Board is represented at the bottom with the various intervening layers at their disposal prior to addressing an upcoming Regulator review. Governance Park by Skillspeak provides the first two layers and these are the closest to the Board entity as they are based on self-assessment at its core. Firstly, they need a very comprehensive set of Performance and Competency Standards against which to be measured. These need to be complete (no missing elements or areas of responsibility) and also stated objectively. It is not appropriate to frame measurement criteria where the answers