Improving board deliberations

In my view, the quality of board decision-making is usually determined less by the time invested in an issue at the board table than the time spent before the meeting considering what points should be made and questions raised in the deliberations. I recently updated my Director’s Deliberative Checklist for a client, and thought I… Continue reading Improving board deliberations

Meanwhile, back in the real world …

While Environment Minister Melissa Price was suggesting that the IPCC climate change report was ‘drawing a long bow’ to recommend phasing out coal in favour of low-carbon energy sources, businesses, insurers, lawyers, accountants, peak bodies, and even Government regulators have all been getting on with the job – both here and internationally. In their December… Continue reading Meanwhile, back in the real world …

Climate change and the Minister’s ‘long bow’

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which has gained so much attention over the last couple of days, was met with a soft response by Environment Minister Melissa Price, which may not be all that surprising given her voting record on climate issues. Bob Ward’s Opinion piece in The Guardian notes that “the dangers if governments ignore efforts… Continue reading Climate change and the Minister’s ‘long bow’

Criteria for a Public Policy Business Case

In my previous post about a research project, in which two think tanks with decidedly different heritage and focus were invited to assess the same 20 policy initiatives using a common set of criteria (effectively a draft evidence-based policy standard), I mentioned that those criteria had been developed by Prof Kenneth Wiltshire AO, and previously… Continue reading Criteria for a Public Policy Business Case

Improving trust in public policy

The newDemocracy Foundation’s efforts ‘to improve public trust in how we take public decisions’ include a research project which sought to discover whether a meaningful, widely-accepted standard for evidence-based policy making might be achievable.  They did this by asking two think-tanks known to have very different views to ‘stress test’ 20 major policies and see… Continue reading Improving trust in public policy