135. Is everyone in an organization ”doing” corporate governance?

A friend recently suggested to me that literally everyone in an organization is part of corporate governance, and I *love* the idea!   SCRIPT I had an amazing conversation with a young person who, despite his age, is a legitimately experienced corporate director and a bit of a provocateur. You can already imagine how much I like him. If you’re interested in learning more, head over to the latest episode of the Sound-Up Governance podcast at www.groundupgovernance.com. Anyway, his name is Andrew Escobar and one of the truth bombs he dropped was something I wholeheartedly believe but had never really thought about before: Everyone in an organization plays a role in corporate governance. Every single person. Thinking of corporate governance as something that begins and ends in the boardroom clearly doesn’t align with my concept of corporate governance, so that’s not new. But this is taking it further. Imagine a massive company with countless employees in hugely varied roles, some of whom probably don’t even know that there IS a board, let alone what a board does or what corporate governance is. Still, those people have positions in the organization only because of a decision that was made at some place in the hierarchy, so we’re already talking about corporate governance. But it goes the other way, too. The experiences of those employees, and their performance, their productivity, no matter how seemingly insignificant, DOES have influence over decisions that happen throughout the organization, and possibly all the way to the top. Not to mention, those employees make decisions themselves. Think about that: EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN AN ORGANIZATION is “doing” corporate governance, whether they know it or not. It’s so cool.