By Pepper Parr
February 17th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
Has the Mayor returned to the classroom to learn more about governance which is now a hot topic for members of corporate Boards of Directors?
A number of Universities offer these short but very intense courses that are pricey. The DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University offers two different courses.
Innovation Governance for Directors
Imperatives of Good Governance
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward – listening carefully to what is being said at a council meeting.
While the Mayor has a busy schedule – she is the kind of person who would make the time to improve her skill set – she has the kind of personality that would make her an excellent student as well.
During the discussion over the problems with the CRM system that has hit nothing but snags, Mayor Meed Ward made a passing mention of some training she had or was taking on governance.
Mayor Meed Ward has been an advocate of stronger governance for some time.
Assuming for the moment that the Mayor has returned to the classroom and the course fees, which are pretty steep (a 2 ¼ day course comes in at a bit under $5000 – it would be money well spent.
There are far too many people who want to jump right into political service with a really poor background on governance matters and, for some, precious little depth or experience to do the job.
We’ve sent out a query to her office – we’ll let you know what comes back.
Governance training seems like it could be a good thing for the entire council. Perhaps the City has in-house expertise that could be used to create a course for them. A common organization problem in having an individual get advanced training is that the co-workers need it as well for it to be most effective.
Or they could all read some of the literature; e.g.: https://www.carvergovernance.com/model.htm
After that, perhaps Rensis Likert’s work on highly effective groups would be of interest?